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THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 



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'I DEDICATION 



TO THE DISCOURAGER OF HESITANCY 
^HALL I still hide your identity under those modest 
words of your own choosing — The Discourager of 
Hesitancy — ^you, who have been, and are, so much to me ? 
Ideas have come to fruition through your sympathy : you 
have encouraged what may be good in this book, and dis- 
countenanced what was bad. It was to please you that 
this " Diary of a Looker-On " has taken shape. 

Such a book is the result of keeping a Diary. 

The battered Diaries lie before me — fourteen pocket- 
books closely written, a day to a page, records of things 
fancied, seen, felt, that seemed worth preserving. " There's 
husbandry in Heaven," so why should not I, a writer, 
utilise impressions of the hour, as occasions arise, in the 
columns of journals and periodicals ? In one form or 
another, in part or in whole, these pages were published 
in the Daily Chronicle (through whose generous columns 
the Looker-On was allowed to meander), the Nation^ the 
Academy, the St. James's Gazette, the Evening News, 
the Reader, the Studio, the Bookman, and the Pall Mall 
Magazine. 

Here they are collected, amended, extended or curtailed 
as seemed necessary — grouped in the months when they 
were written, and in the order of their origin, as the Diary 



vi DEDICATION 

of one who amused himself by imagining that he was a 
Looker-On at the pageant of life and art. 

You will like the book, I know. But the others, the 
many others ? Some will say that it lacks unity. It 
does. The only unity in a Diary is the personality of the 
Diarist. Some day I shall write a sad book to explain 
why one writes a book. Meanwhile here is this, for better 
or worse — done. 

We are now starting forth, dear Discourager of Hesi- 
tancy, on a greater adventure, toward farther horizons 
than any I have ever watched. For it is our purpose to 
wander out into the world. The Diaries will continue ; 
but there will be no need to mail you the journals where 
the amplifications of day-by-day impressions are published, 
for we shall be together. 

C. L. H. 



CONTENTS 

JANUARY 

PAGE 

Those Who Watch 3 

What's Past is Prologue 6 

Megaphones and Ideals 9 

Reading "Don Quixote"" 12 

Leonardo the Seeker 16 

The Pensee Mere 20 

Light 23 

FEBRUARY 

At a Maeterlinck Matinee 29 

A Mission Service 32 

A Vision on the Rhone 37 

Thomas Hardy 40 

Danes 46 

Modern Dutchmen 50 

Old Dutchmen 52 

MARCH 

A Practical Mystic 59 

Music and Daffodils 63 



viii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Musical Pictures 66 

Jonathan and the Tree 69 

Useful Death 71 

" An Exquisite Little Master "" 74 

" Three Parts Woman — One Part Artist "" 77 

The Child in Art 80 

APRIL 

Italy Under Snow 85 

A Spartan's Home-Coming 88 

The Guardian of the Acropolis 91 
A Greek Boy Who Laughed at the Rain 94 

Dawn at Nauplia 98 

Last Glimpses of Greece 101 

MAY 

Bedside Reading 108 

The Apparition 110 

The Nightingale 113 
Two R.A. Presidents . 

I. Reynolds 116 

II. Lord Leighton 120 

East and West 124 

The New Sculpture 127 

May in Paris 130 



CONTENTS ix 

PAGE 

France Knows 132 

Gaston la Touche and a Comparison 136 
A Little Art Journey on the Continent 138 

JUNE 

Paddington or Lyonesse 147 

The Man Who Took No Risks 150 

The Open Gate 153 

Faith 156 

A Painter at Work 160 

Sunshine in the Guildhall 163 

An Old Master in Whitechapel 167 

" Old Crome was England " 170 

A Great Sea Painter 174 



JULY 




Impressions of Travel: 




The Fog 


181 


The Launch 


182 


The Kid 


184 


Religious Experiences : 




Happiness 


186 


Pilgrims 


188 


Consolation 


189 


The Creature in the Cottage 


190 


Entering London 


196 




b 



JANUARY 



JANUARY 



THOSE WHO WATCH 

A S I walked meditatively through Cheapside on the first 
day of the year, my heart disowned the bustle, and 
I thought of those who watch. They speak rarely ; stars 
and the sky are their companions ; their home is the 
moor and the sea. Mostly they are sailors and shepherds, 
and, being inarticulate, they are near to the heart of 
things. 

As I walked through Cheapside I saw one who has left 
the sea twenty years ; but the habit of watching remains. 
He will trudge ten miles on a Sunday, just to sit for an hour 
on the Lizard Cliffs watching the homeward-bound vessels 
rounding the land, so close that he can distinguish the air 
the band is playing. When no vessel is in sight he 
watches the void, as if he sees and recognises things not 
revealed to others, thinking vagrant thoughts, till the sun 
settles upon the sea, and sinking below the water, hastens 
him off on his ten-mile trudge home. But his eyes do not 
lose the vision of immensity. 

As I walked through Cheapside I saw the grey sea churn- 
ing on the sands of Sennen Cove. I climbed the path, 
marked by white stones, to the little storm-swept hut 
where the coastguard watches. On one side it is but a 
short wild walk to the Land's End ; before him is the 
pcean, and on a clear day he can see the Isles of Scilly, 

3 



4 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

clustering, like fairy islands, on the horizon. He watches, 
and happenings almost tragic accompany his watching. 
For he is an Official, and must only report Government 
boats ; but all homecoming vessels try to make him flash 
the news of their approach to England. Poor, buffeted, 
travel-stained ships, striving like unborn souls to make 
themselves known ! He sees them pass, pleading for 
recognition, is motionless, and watches. 

As I walked through Cheapside I saw a sailor-man 
standing on Plymouth Hoe, peering into the night. He 
is quite alone ; the rain beats on his muffled figure ; 
nothing seems to be left of him but his gleaming eyes. 
He is watching for the first glimpse of the American liner, 
that pauses a little outside the break-water at Plymouth 
to take up passengers for Cherbourg. There he watches 
all night, all next day, if necessary, till he sights the 
vessel. Then he runs to his hut, speaks a few words 
through the telephone, and the passengers dozing in the 
hotels, start, grasp their rugs, and say one to another, 
" Quick ! the tender leaves in half an hour ! " And the 
watcher, whom they have never seen, his duty done, walks 
home from Plymouth Hoe to bed. He watches in his 
dreams. 

As I walked through Cheapside I saw a great ship 
sailing through the night a thousand miles from land. 
And I heard in the darkness that cry, strange, sad, and 
comforting, of the watching sailor, just relieved : " AlPs 
well ! Lights burning brightly." 

As I walked through Cheapside I saw the dim folds of 
the downs and the shepherd who throughout the night has 
been befriending the lambs. It is early spring, cold 



WHAT'S PAST IS PROLOGUE r> 

and inclement. Dawn is breaking. The shepherd pauses, 
and we stand together a moment to watch the light herald- 
ing the day. The shepherd's deep eyes see things that I 
cannot see. He does not speak ; but when I have passed 
on he waves his lantern. The yellow glimmer mingles with 
the dawn. I wave in answer to his signal. 

And just then, by the corner of Wood Street, in Cheap- 
side, a voice addressed me. It proceeded from a cabman 
who had driven up to the kerb, where I had paused to wave 
farewell to the shepherd. 

" Where to. Captain ? *" asked the cabman. 

" I have not engaged you," I answered. 

" Well, I'm jiggered ! " said the cabman, addressing the 
crowd which had collected. " Here's a bloke as stands 
waving his umbrella to me fit to break his neck, and then 
says that he ain't engaged me." 

I glanced around, and realised that I had to explain to 
a crowd of young merchants, stout policemen, and innumer- 
able knowing boys, that I was waving my umbrella 
not to a cabman, but to a shepherd at dawn on the Sussex 
Downs. 

It was impossible. 

So, sighing, I entered the cab, and was driven in the 
direction of Threadneedle Street. 



WHAT'S PAST IS PROLOGUE 

lyTY eyes fell upon these words — " What's Past is 

Prologue." I had skimmed the evening and the 

weekly papers, and as it was near midnight I was thinking 



6 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

of walking home, when I saw that quotation printed upon 
the fly-leaf of a new anthology. 

Those words stayed with me for two miles of my home- 
ward walk, and would have remained in neighbourly consola- 
tion until I reached my doorstep, and afterwards perhaps, 
had not one of London"'s night scenes distracted me. It 
happened in a wide deserted street — noiselessly. That 
was the interest of this night piece. It began silently. 

The street where I overtook the distraction was wide 
and still. A sprinkle of rain had fallen and was now 
drying, leaving suggestions of moisture on the pavement 
like the trails of snails. A quarter of a mile ahead, I had 
seen the group, and wondered what it portended. Draw- 
ing near, it resolved itself into a hansom cab and a police- 
man ; but this particular conjunction was uncommon. 
The cabman had released the reins, and was settled in his 
perch as if it were an armchair. The policeman, looking 
upwards, asked a question at intervals — " Are you coming 
down ? Are you coming down when I tell yer ? "" To 
these requests the cabman made no answer. He was 
fuddled with drink, but not entirely oblivious of the pass- 
ing show and the gruff voice of the law, for, at the tenth 
or eleventh time of asking, suddenly he heaved himself 
from his perch and descended heavily to the road. As he 
did so, the horse screwed its mild head round, curious to 
know the meaning of this interlude in its workaday life. 
No sooner did the cabman touch earth than the instinct to 
run stirred in his muddled brain. He lurched a few feet, 
flopping like a seal. Three strides, and the policeman's 
hand fell heavily upon his shoulder. " If you do it again," 
he said, " Til knock you down," which was an unintelligent 



WHAT'S PAST IS PROLOGUE 7 

remark, as it was with great difficulty that he succeeded in 
holding the cabman up. Meanwhile, the horse moved 
forward a few steps, and elongated his neck, probably 
searching for grass. The policeman heard the move- 
ment, and, realising his dilemma, blew his whistle three 
times. The call brought a diminutive man, horsekeeper 
or ostler, to the spot. 

The policeman repeated his threat to the muddled 
failure, whose shoulders shrunk into his big palm. " If 
you do it again," he said, gruffly, " I'll knock you down." 
Then the ostler man intervened. Advancing, he said, 
" You mustn't do that, constable. You mustn't knock him 
down." The constable asked the ostler man, frequently 
and forcibly, who he was, and what he meant. The ostler 
man proffered no information. He merely wanted fair 
play. He represented justice. It was fine. 

With one eye on the cabman, and the other roaming 
between the ostler man and the horse, the constable again 
blew his whistle three times. The call was not answered. 

I waited. The hour was opportune for reflection. The 
fuddled cabman was an unemployable in the making. 
There is no hope for a man who drinks to drunkenness 
while on duty. He must descend to the ranks of the un- 
employable unless a miracle happen. He is already one 
of earth's failures. 

Above the head of this earth failure somewhere in the 
smoky sky great Jupiter hung. It was the week of his 
opposition. Telescopes were being directed to that vast, 
cloud-wrapped gas and heat bubble which, in the course of 
ages, may harden into a planet like our own, but vaster, 
perhaps destined to produce a magnificent race of men and 



8 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

women, for which we are but the prologue. And this in- 
competent cabman, this elderly failure, what of him and 
his fellow incompetents in the Jupiters of the future ? 
" Love will redeem him," I hear one say. That may be. 
All things are possible to the power that controls Jupiter, 
and gives to man hope and faith. Will this fuddled 
failure, made perfect, ever -look back on his blundering 
and tinkering here, and know that the past was but 
prologue ? 

More squeaks from the whistle restored me to the 
present. A policeman appeared from a side street running 
quickly ; then another, followed by a third. One folded 
the cabman's rug and placed it within the vehicle. Another 
seized the bridle of the amazed horse. A third clutched 
the unattached arm of the incapacitated cause of this hitch 
in the working of midnight London. 

The constable who was leading the horse stepped out, 
followed by the cabman who had failed, dragged along by 
his escort. That just man, the ostler, walked in the rear 
with determination on his perky face. 

Slowly the mournful procession dwindled out of sight. 
I was left alone with the memory of the great news from 
nowhere — Whafs Past is Prologue — that Shakespeare 
heard and passed on to us. 



MEGAPHONES AND IDEALS 

^T^HE London elections are over. Quiet folk can now 

return to quiet thoughts and quiet topics. The 

streets and the newspapers are normal once more. The 



MEGAPHONES AND IDEALS 9 

tumult and the shouting have ceased. The captains and 
the kings are, one hopes, resting. I take up the little 
book again and re-read that arresting tale of the Ideal. 

On this day last week — the night of the declaration of 
the poll in my constituency — I was tasting, with infinite 
pleasure, an extract from the dedicatory preface that 
Charles Baudelaire wrote for his "Petits Poemes en 
Prose." 

" Who of us," he asks, " has not dreamed, in moments 
of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical 
without rhythm and without rhyme, subtle and staccato 
enough to follow the lyric motions of the soul, the waver- 
ing outlines of meditation, the sudden starts of the con- 
science ? " 

I read and rejoiced. Such writing stimulates and gives 
wings to the imagination. A flush of gratitude to Baude- 
laire for this communication swept through me, and I was 
about to abandon myself to reverie, when my emotions 
were rudely disturbed by wild shouts and the martial 
sounds of fife and drum. I closed the book. Who can 
resist a fife-and-drum band and a shouting crowd whirling 
down the street .? I left the house, and joined them. We 
swept into the main road, and there, outside a large stone 
building, I became one of a hot and swaying mass of 
humanity. 

The hour was half-past ten. It was superfluous to ask 
what this concourse meant. They were waiting for the 
declaration of the poll from the window of the dark, stony 
official building. 

At the end of a quarter of an hour I asked myself if I 
should return home, and surrender the rest of the evening 



10 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

to the charm of Baudelaire's poems in prose. Procrasti- 
nating, I was lost, or, rather, found myself still waiting in 
that din, when, at a quarter to twelve, suddenly the singing 
and shouting and the fifes and drums ceased. A thousand 
fingers pointed towards a light that had appeared in the 
dark stone building. 

The window was thrown open, and against the space of 
the lighted room, we saw the silhouettes of the flushed faces 
of the candidates, their supporters, and an elderly, plump, 
important-looking man. He, I suppose, was the returning 
officer. Looming large, he stood in the centre of the group. 

It was his moment — the climax of his official life — ^and 
he was determined to enjoy it to the limit, to drain the 
intoxicating cup of fame. Every line of his figure, the 
contour of his face, the emphasis of the raised hand, said : 
" I am Authority. Me you shall hear. This is my hour. 
Come rain or snow, it shall be all Mine." 

He stood magnificently in view, and in his two hands he 
held an enormous megaphone, looking like the funnel of a 
steamer, but shining, and reflecting the lights. 

" Ladies and gentlemen," he began, in a full round deep 
voice, " I have the honour to announce to you " 

The rest of his exordium was lost in a storm of shouts 
and angry injunctions to come to the point. 

But he would not curtail one instant of his triumph. 
His right hand flapped condescendingly in the air as if 
saying, " Be patient, children, and in good time I will tell 
you all." 

" Ladies and gentlemen," he began again, " I have the 
honour to announce to you " 

Again he was interrupted, and a cadaverous man at 



MEGAPHONES AND IDEALS 11 

my side cried in a horse voice, " Give us the figures 
governor." 

" Ladies and gentlemen ' 

"We ain't ladies and gentlemen," shouted a dozen 
voices. 

The returning officer placed the megaphone on the 
window-sill and raised his hands deprecatingly. 

Just then an excited individual broke through the 
crowd waving a piece of paper, and screaming, "We've 
won Birmingham." 

" 'Oo's we ? " said the cadaverous man at my elbow. 
" We've won Birmingham, 'ave we ? 'Oo's we, may I 
ask?" 

The fight that followed was free and frank, I saw an old 
gentleman hit another over the head with a cotton um- 
brella and while they fought, the returning officer shouted, 
" Ladies and gentlemen," &c., through the megaphone. 

Edging away from the battlefield I recalled that little 
prose poem by Baudelaire, named " Which is True ? " 
How, when Benedicta died (she who filled earth and air 
with the ideal), her lover buried her with his own hands. 
How a little person singularly like the dead Benedicta 
suddenly appeared on the fresh grave shrieking with 
laughter, and saying, " Look at me ! I am the real Bene- 
dicta ! A pretty sort of baggage I am, and to punish you 
for your blindness and folly you shall love me just as I 
am! " 

Then the man was furious, and shouted, " No ! No ! 
No ! " and stamped on the ground so violently that his 
foot and leg sank up to the knee into the earth of the new 
grave. 



12 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

And now, adds the teller of the Tale, " Like a wolf 
caught in a trap, I remain fastened, perhaps for ever, to 
the grave of the ideal."" 

Can you wonder if, through many dreams, that night 
Baudelaire''s little story of tJie real and the ideal Benedicta 
was thundered at me through a megaphone by a plump, 
distracted man ? 

It is only now, a week later, that Baudelaire, himself, 
through this little book, whispers it again. 



READING "DON QUIXOTE" 

TjIOR days the invitation-card had rested on my mantel- 
board, balanced against the angle of the clock — 
Tercentenary Dinner in Celebration of the First Publica- 
tion of " Don Quixote." 

A week before the dinner my conscience whispered this 
question : " Can a man of honour eat and drink to the 
immortal memory of Cervantes — who has not read 'Don 
Quixote ' ? " I paused in the act of re-lighting my pipe. 
"Have I read ' Don Quixote ' ? " I asked myself, with serious 
emphasis. " Of course I have. As a child I read it. Every- 
body does. Why, I remember Dore's illustrations perfectly 
well, and Maclise, or somebody, painted Sancho Panza's 
interview with the Duchess. I remember Rosinante and 
Dapple and the windmills that Don Quixote tilted at. Of 
course IVe read it. Everybody reads ' Don Quixote ' and 
the novels of Dumas once a year. Cervantes lost the use 
of his left hand at the battle of Lepanto. Of course I've 
read * Don Quixote.' Why, it's a classic." 



READING "DON QUIXOTE" IS 

All the next day my conscience reiterated the annoying 
question, " Have you read ' Don Quixote ' ? " About four 
in the afternoon I paused outside a book shop, and thus 
addressed my conscience : " To be perfectly frank with 
you, I haven't read ' Don Quixote.' "" " Then you mustn't 
go to the dinner," remarked my conscience. " Oh, come ! 
come ! " said I. 

I entered the shop and bought a copy of " Don Quixote." 
That evening from nine until half-past eleven I wrestled 
with the classic. In the last half-hour I examined my 
watch four times. 

The next evening at nine o'clock I again seated myself 
in my armchair before a pleasant fire, found the place with 

some difficulty, and, and . When I awoke the hands of 

the clock pointed to eleven. " Dear me ! " I reflected, 
" two evenings of steady reading, and Don Quixote hasn't 
yet met Sancho Panza. How many pages are there in 
this fat book ? 607 ! Whew ! How many words on a 
page? 650! That means 400,000 words altogether. 
Why, it would take me a month of evenings to finish it, 
and in five days the dinner takes place. I think I'll read 
it after the dinner is over — at leisure. It's wrong to hurry 
through a classic." 

But I could not banish " Don Quixote " from my mind. 
In those intervening days I regarded humanity in a new 
light. I wished that the world had one great ear into 
which I could whisper the question — "Have you read 
'Don Quixote'?" Into several ears I did whisper the 
words, and the replies I received salved my conscience. 

"Great book," answered a journalist. "In Lord Ave- 
bury's list I opine. There have been 300 editions of it. 



J 4 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

Translated into foiu'teen languages. I once made a collec- 
tion of Sancho Panza's proverbs. Capital stuff ! Cervantes 
lost a leg at the battle of Lepanto." 

" But have you read ' Don Quixote ' ? "" 

" If you mean right through from beginning to end, I 
haven't. No time to read books. But I know all about 
it. A classic, if ever there was one." 

" How beautifully it's written,"" said a girl of Spanish 
birth, domiciled in England. " The Spanish language was 
like wax in the hands of Cervantes. We're very proud of 
him at home. Poor man ! he lost his wife — or mother 
was it ? — at the battle of Lepanto. 

" But have you read ' Don Quixote ' ? " 

" Not since I left school ! We read the first six chapters 
in class, and I shall never forget them. Such beautiful 
Spanish prose. I never see a windmill without thinking of 
Don Quixote. He died the same year as Shakespeare." 

"All Cervantes sought," said a snuffy old gentleman, who, 
amid a zareba of books, was writing a preface to the 
" Exemplary Novels " in the British Museum Reading 
Room — " all Cervantes sought was to cure his countrymen 
of their passion for chivalry romances. Coleridge truly 
said that ' Don Quixote ' is a rare combination of the 
permanent with the individual. The first edition was 
most carelessly written, crowded with misprints and errors. 
He even called his characters by wrong names. Miguel de 
Cervantes Saavedra never recovered from a wound in the 
head he received at the battle of Lepanto. I do wish they 
would take the hairs out of the ink bottles in the Reading 
Room." 

" But you have read ' Don Quixote ' ? " 



READING "DON QUIXOTE" 15 

" Not with the attention such a classic deserves. But it 
comes within the scope of my present scheme of study. It' s 
perfectly scandalous how the lights in the Reading Room 
flicker." 

I discovered a father of a small family who acknowledged 
at once that he had not read " Don Quixote " ; but he had 
read Jaccaci's volume " On the Trial of Don Quixote." 
" Uncommon interestin' ! You remember the bull-fighter 
Jaccaci met, Avho knew the book by heart, and found 
it droll reading, and said there was somethin' in it that he 
couldn't get hold of, which makes priests and the like read 
it over and over again. No, sir, books don't die like men 
do. I'm a great reader. Ever come across 'Pigs in 
Clover ' ? " 

" I wonder," said I, " if it was just the idea at the back 
of Don Quixote, the undying ideal represented by the word 
quixotic, the forlorn hope in us all that, emptied of self, 
God-directed, yearns out in longing brotherhood to the 
Knight of the Sorrowful Figure ? " 

" 'Oo knows ? " answered the father. " P'raps you're right ! 
Wonderful man Cervantes. Hadn't any hands I'm told. 
Had 'em chopped off at the battle of Lepanto. Must have 
written the book like that artist fellow who paints hold- 
ing the brushes in his mouth. No ! I haven't read ' Don 
Quixote ' myself, but I gave it to my eldest boy at 
Christmas. ' 

The night before the dinner I was slowly reading the 
Chrysostom chapters, finding them wise and beautiful, 
realising that if I gave heart, brain and leisure to " Don 
Quixote," it might become one of those intimate and 
inspiriting friends that fail not, when the journalist bustled 



16 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

into my room unannounced. "I say," he cried, "Fve 
arranged that we sit together."" 

" But," said I gravely, " will your conscience permit you 
to attend a dinner to commemorate the tercentenary of 
the publication of ' Don Quixote' when you haven't read 
the book ? " 

" Why certainly ! " said the journalist gaily. " A 
dinner's a dinner ! It don't matter what it's for. I'd dine 
with the Additional Curates Fund if it asked me." 



LEONARDO THE SEEKER 

rilHOSE who delight to spend leisure hours during the 
winter months wandering through the South Kensing- 
ton Museum know the glass-case of autograph treasures just 
without the Constantine lonides collection. It contains a 
poem by Keats, a letter from Scott, a despatch from 
Napoleon, and — and three small note-books in parchment 
covers. The ink is faded, the handwriting is indistinct, 
running from right to left, and the language is Italian. 
On three of the open pages are geometrical designs com- 
plementing the crabbed, back-hand calligraphy; two are 
blank, and one has a drawing of a man's head verging to 
caricature. 

These three note-books once hung from the girdle of 
Leonardo da Vinci, the " myriad-minded," whose habit it 
was, for forty years, to transcribe his thoughts which 
ranged over everything — the whence, the why, the whither, 
but chiefly the Now. It would be easier to list what he was 
not than what he was. Painter, sculptor, architect, author. 



LEONARDO THE SEEKER 17 

musician, mathematician, botanist, geologist, astronomer, 
maker of belles-lettres. Some of these arts he practised ; 
all were potential in him. He learnt the way, if it did not 
please him always to hoist the copestone. 

This we learn from the twenty note-books and bound 
manuscript volumes bequeathed by him to his friend 
Francesco Melzi when he, who had been a wanderer so long, 
lay dying in the chateau of Cloux, near Amboise, the guest 
of Francis I. 

When Ruskin said of Leonardo, " He debased his finer in- 
stincts by caricature and remained to the end of his days the 
slave of an archaic smile," we can only sigh to think that such 
a seer as Ruskin should have seen so little when his sympathy 
was not evoked. Did Ruskin ever examine the manuscripts 
in Milan, Paris, London, and Windsor ? There are few 
experiences so moving as to sit in the Royal Library at 
Windsor turning the priceless sheets of the Leonardo 
drawings and manuscripts. The myriad-minded becomes a 
reality. This peer of Shakespeare and Goethe is a living 
man. The holiday -folk strolling on the terrace outside are 
shapes and shadows ; the Eton boys, playing far below 
in the meadows, are gnats in the sunshine. The words of 
Antonio Billi, his earliest biographer, come to mind : 

" His spirit was never at rest, his mind was ever devis- 
ing new things. " 

Leonardo the painter we all know. Leonardo of the 
drawings some know ; but Leonardo who counted painting 
and drawing but episodes of the vast business called Life 
can only be realised by those who have examined the 
manuscripts. Only thus can we grasp the fecundity of 



18 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

this mind which renounced the practice of painting through 
sheer intellectual compulsion to study its laws, passing 
from those laws to the quest of the laws that govern the 
world. The small drawings which accompany the pages of 
manuscript are generally self-explanatory. He could convey 
his meaning by a design, the description is complementary. 
His Fables, the Treatise on Painting, the Prophecies, the 
inquiries, " Why water is salt ? " " What is Force ? "" that 
beautiful passage wherein he imagines Helen, old and 
wrinkled, gazing into her mirror, weeping, and wondering 
why she had been twice carried away ; the aphorisms, the 
allegories, the cries on life and death — these reveal 
Leonardo the Man, the Seeker. 

He had no time for regrets or griefs. He looked out, 
not within ; this wise man knew that joy lies in mental 
activity, in being always at school, even during playtime. 
Let me give a few extracts from his note-books and volumes 
and sheets, a selection of which Mr. McCurdy has newly 
translated. It is from these note-books that we must 
reconstruct the life of Leonardo, not from the legende, 
in Pater's phrase, that grew up around the myriad- 
minded : 

" Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price 

of labour." 

" Our body is subject to heaven, and heaven is subject 

to the spirit." 

" Nature never breaks her own law." 
" In art we may be said to be grandsons unto God." 
" The artist is the son, not the grandson of Nature." 
" The painter ought to strive at being universal." 



LEONARDO THE SEEKER 19 

" There are many who hold the faith of the Son and 
only build temples in the name of the Mother."" 

There is humour, too. This of shoemakers : 

" Men will take a pleasure in seeing their own works 
destroyed." 

This of feather-mattresses : 

" Flying creatures will support men with their feathers." 

The Fables, his experiments in belles-lettres, could be 
published next Christmas and few would know that they 
had not been written within the year. 

A love child himself, there is no record that he ever 
loved woman. 

Yet this is the man who has produced in painting the 
most haunting of all the female types. Close the eyes, 
and Mona Lisa rises with her inward, subtle, ageless smile ; 
close the eyes, and the imagination flies through the riot 
of Piccadilly, up a dark staircase to that quiet room 
where Saint Anne smiles on the Mother and the Mother 
smiles on the child. He, the celibate, in whose mind the 
man of science outran the artist, has above all other artists 
depicted in religious pictures the human side of the 
Mother's love. Leonardo did not confuse and bemuse him- 
self with his passions or with his material ; he sought truth 
with brain, hand and heart, but in detachment always. 
He dissected thirty bodies, and he wrote : " A good painter 
has two chief objects to paint — man and ^ the intention of 
his soul ; the former is easy, the latter hard." 

Leonardo is the Seeker, not interested personally in 
mortals, but profoundly interested in the laws that under- 



20 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

lie and outlive their material existence. I see him child- 
less, the whole world his family, striding through Italy, 
wandering in the East, returning to Italy to contest with 
Michael Angelo (that would have been enough for most 
men !), desiring no permanent roof ; no ties, nothing that 
would intervene between him and his quest of knowledge ; 
using his talents one by one, and then exploring them to 
observe the germs of life within ; seldom bringing any 
scientific prevision to fruition, but working mole-like, 
laying foundations, building scaffoldings, wrestling eternally 
with his adversary, eternally crying, " I will not let you 
go unless you tell me," and passing hence still unsatisfied, 
those note-books near him, in one of which he had written, 
" When I thought I was learning to live, I was but learning 
to die." 



THE PENSEE MERE 

npHE environment was perfect. There was no crowding 
of pictures, and the spectators were few. Silence, a 
clear, frosty January morning, and fifty-three landscapes 
roaming round the walls of the gallery, all on a line with 
the eye, easily seen. No clashing of temperaments, no 
discords. Only six men exhibiting — mature and capable 
painters — united in aspiration and intention. It must be 
so, because in the forefront of the catalogue issued by this 
Society of Six, is printed that fine reflection by Jean Fran 
^ois Millet, the sum of his spiritual vision — " Every artist 
ought to have a central thought, une pensee mdre, which 



THE PENSEE MERE 21 

he expresses with all the strength of his soul, and tries to 
stamp on the hearts of others." 

I perambulated the gallery, inviting the pensSe m^re of 
any or of all these fifty-three landscapes by Messrs. Pep- 
percorn, Austen Brown, Aumonier, Allan, Leslie Thomson, 
and Hill to sink into my understanding. 

The experiment was worth making. These men are all 
painters who take their work seriously. They are sound 
and straightforward, imafFected by the side gusts of fashion ; 
they are in the best sense British. 

Not for them the wilfulnesses and horrors of some of the 
exhibits at the International Society. They are not whim- 
sied with their talent. They are no believers in surprise 
packets. They offer no thrill. I received none. But from 
two of the landscapes, at least, something passed from 
painter to spectator. 

One was The Cliff", by Mr. A. D. Peppercorn. I 
imagine that the pensee mere in his mind was solemnity and 
solitude. There is no hint of the joy of life, of gaiety, 
sunshine, or lyrical beauty in this picture of brooding 
nature, which is typical of all Mr. Peppercorn's work. A 
barren and rugged cliff rises above a desolate ocean, upon 
which there is one small sail. Of moisture and atmosphere 
there is nothing. Sad cliff, sad sea, sad sky loom out 
yellowy -brown, merged, as it were, in a mahogany glaze, 
eternally simple, eternally forlorn. It is the kind of land- 
scape that a Hebrew prophet would have admired 

The other was Mr. Leslie Thomson's A Dorset River. 
His pensee mAre was also solitude, but a solitude bathed in 
grey light, not in golden brown. Manet said that the light 
should be the principal person in a picture, and Mr. Leslie 



22 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

Thomson makes light dominate his Dorset river country 5 
not the eflFalgent rays with which Turner materialised his 
dreams, but pearly light issuing from a sky rising over 
two-thirds of the picture and reflected in the estuary of 
the river. The sheen of the water ends abruptly against 
the dun bank. To the left rises one scraggy tree, on the 
right looms a punt. All is simple, grave and instinct 
with that particular loneliness that only a river far from a 
town has. 

These are gallery pictures out of reach of the average 
man. 

I walked round the room, amusing myself in trying to 
select a smaller picture that I should choose for my own 
apartment. Thirteen had been already sold, showing that 
thirteen people had found the irresistible thing. But I 
could not make up my mind. They had so many qualities, 
but not — beauty, sheer beauty that will not be denied. 
In the mood of that biting cold day I wanted something 
that^ would open a window, give a lilt to the moment, 
make it lyrical. 

These pictures by the Society of Six were too autumnal, 
too suggestive of the outlook of the poet who called his 
volume " In Russet and Grey." 

Thus reflecting I descended the dark stairs, passed out 
into the bleak street, crossed the road, and there, in the 
window of a print shop, was for me the irresistible thing, 
a reproduction in colour of Whistler's nocturne in blue 
and gold, now in the Tate Gallery, called Old Batter sea 
Bridge, 

He had no pensee mere when he painted this lovely 
vision. Whistler painted it because he had to ; because the 



LIGHT 23 

impulse to express his vision of the beauty of that twilight 
by old Thames was overwhelming. Think of it ! How 
strange it is ! The ecstasy of the moment when Whistler 
first saw the blue-black bridge rising in the blue night, 
the glow of creation, the insults heaped upon him in that 
shameful trial in the law courts about this very work ; 
gradual recognition ; fame ; death ; immortality. 



LIGHT 

TT is nearing four o'clock on a January afternoon. 
Figures are crossing the court-yard of Burlington 
House; but although the Old Masters' exhibition is 
open, these wayfarers are not hurrying thither. They 
pass the turnstile, walk through bare rooms, and enter 
the lecture-hall. In the summer-time this apartment 
is utilised for sculpture ; now benches rise in tiers from 
the floor almost to the roof, and facing them is the 
lecturer's desk and lamp. The benches are crowded 
with students — youths and girls — for the lecturer is 
popular. 

Indeed, no professor of painting for many years, if ever, 
has aroused such interest and enthusiasm as has Mr. 
George Clausen, He has something to say, much to say, 
and he says it simply and unaifectedly. and in a way to 
flatter us that we are being talked to by a comrade, not 
lectured at by a steel-faced Olympian, 

Each student feels that the lecturer is a fellow worker 
— one who has never dropped, through lassitude, into a 
convention ; one who is always searching and exploring 



24 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

Nature, and continually establishing his foundations by 
considering and re-considering the best works of the past. 
Over these lectures broods the personality of Reynolds, his 
grave and wise words are quoted, until the voice of the 
dead becomes a living voice, and we seem to hear him 
saying — "The rules which this theory, or any other 
teaches can be no more than teaching the art of seeing 
nature." 

Remembering the many years I have enjoyed Mr. 
Clausen's pictures, the beauty and the interest of them, 
and his incessant pursuit of the most magical and the 
most elusive of all things — light ; recalling his Girl 
at the Gate, in the Tate Gallery ; his little landscape 
pastels, notes of effects, never of facts ; his pictures — 
The Green Fields, A Winter Morning, The Barn 
Door, light, atmosphere, and sunshine wafted into a 
room, I listen for sentences that show the brain of 
the student, working into ripeness, behind the vision of 
the eye : 

" What we find in the greatest works, that which keeps 
them still living to us, is the artist's perception of nature, 
expressed through his material. And the greatest men 
see farthest. 

"As usually happens in an artist's work, he tells us 
more than he intends." 

I listen, too, for preferences, and hear that the Ilyssus 
is perhaps the most beautiful of all the Parthenon marbles ; 
Giorgione's Fete Champetre is one of the most beautiful 
pictures in the world; the Annunciation by Rossetti is 
among the finest of the pre-Raphaelite pictures ; some of 



LIGHT 25 

Watts's landscapes, such as The Dove that Returned Noti 
are as fine things as have been done. 

The conviction that he returns to again and again is the 
warp and woof of Mr. Clausen's art life. Here it is in his 
own words : 

" Light seems to me the governing thing, as far as the 
painter is concerned ; it redeems anything that is capable 
of redemption." 

This pursuit of light is the glory of and the excuse for 
most modern painting. On light Turner and Claude 
soared into immortality. It obsessed Rembrandt, and 
through it he made undying things. Light gave him 
victory, even when he painted such repellent subjects as 
the flayed carcass of a bullock. It directs modern land- 
scape painting ; the knowledge of the ways of light made 
Rousseau say : 

"All the formal majesty of a portrait of Louis XIV. by 
Lebrun or Rigaud will be overthrown by a tuft of grass 
clearly lighted by the sun." 

The wonder of light makes Mr. Clausen say : 

"The development of painting has been a gradual 
progress towards the knowledge of light, and how things 
are revealed by it." 

He is with Rousseau, who said that the representation 
of a subject is of no value except through the understand- 
ing of the universal agency of the air. 

To some of the audience this awakening to light may be 
the chief gift that the lecture had to offer, teaching them 



26 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

to track the ways of light as they wander to and fro in the 
world : on a white tablecloth seen through the chinks of a 
door ; on rushes blown by the wind ; in barns, and by the 
round pond in Kensington Gardens ; on the body of a cat 
dozing on the grass, and on a bunch of flowers in a hospital 
ward ; on a table laid for breakfast, and on the faces of 
friends. 

Let me end with a flash of wisdom from the lips of 
Reynolds. Some one came to sit to him in a very ugly hat. 
"Never mind," said the great man, "there's light and 
shade on it."" 



FEBRUARY 



FEBRUARY 



AT A MAETERLINCK MATINEE 
/^N a crisp February afternoon, when the sun was bright 
and the streets enticing, I sat in a chilly theatre. 
Arriving betimes I chose an isolated seat near the end 
of the last row of the pit, and watched those who were 
willing to pay two-and- sixpence for a performance of 
Aglavaine and Selysette. Mostly they were women 
approaching maturity ; not one had the air of being a 
hockey player. 

Large hats shaded their faintly troubled faces, not 
always well drawn ; some wore long cloaks, which they 
drew close around them, as if they wished to hold their 
souls secluded from the world. 

Before the curtain rose a girl entered hurriedly through 
the pit swing doors. She wore a black sailor-hat and a 
dark jacket, and might, not unjustly, have been diagnosed 
as an employee of the Aerated Bread Company with a 
disturbing inclination towards spiritual adventures. She 
doubled, somewhat breathlessly, into the row where I sat, 
pushed past me, and settled herself two seats away. A 
minute later the swing doors were again opened to admit 
a party of three. They were not typical Maeterlinckians : 
they were just ordinary jolly animals, two men and a girl, 
who, seeing a theatre open on an off afternoon, hurried in 
with congratulatory cries. The men had curly-brimmed 

29 



30 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

bowler hats tilted a little to one side, and the chest of the 
taller of the two shone with a vivid scarlet woollen waist- 
coat. From the folds of his neckwear — which was also 
conspicuous — emerged a running greyhound composed of 
imitation diamonds. Their little lady — plump and smil- 
ing — whose hat was of false ermine, and blouse the wrong 
shade of dove- white, divided her archness equally between 
her two cavaliers. They seated themselves in the centre of 
the back row of the pit. 

Then the curtain rose, and Meleander proceeded to read 
Aglavaine''s letter. The house was very still. Ethereal 
soul- waves flowed from the stage and found harbourage in 
the eyes that glowed beneath the isolated picture hats. 
Halfway through the first act I glanced at the youth with 
the scarlet waistcoat. It was at that place in the dialogue 
where Meleander says to Selysette : — 

" Her beauty is different, that is all . . . stranger and 
more ethereal ; it is never the same — one might almost say 
it was more manifold ... it is a beauty along which the 
soul can pass unhindered . . . "" 

Here the youth in the scarlet waistcoat looked towards 
his companion, and said audibly : " Hot stuffs, eh .''"" 

The play proceeded. Meleander had just remarked, " I 
doubt whether a woman can ever deserve to be unhappy," 
when the girl in the black sailor hat suddenly slipped from 
her seat and sidled towards me. " Can you tell me, 
please," she whispered, " what this play is ? What does it 
mean ? " I answered, " Listen, and you will find out what 
it means." 

But as the mystical drama unrolled itself, she became 



AT A MAETERLINCK MATINEE 31 

more troubled, more affected by its incomprehensibility. 
Her fingers entwined themselves one with another ; her 
eyes, the tip of her nose, and her chin, projected outwards 
as if drawn forwards by invisible threads from the stage. 
Her small, pale face grew agitated when Meligrane 
said : 

" No ; do not kiss me to-night. . . . The pain is worse 
than usual. Selysette is the only one who can touch me 
without hurting." 

She drew still closer to me, as if she had lost her bearings 
and found in companionship a directing-post. " It's very 
strange and queer,"" she pleaded. " It's like Ibsen, isn't it';? " 
I mumbled something which was meant to be consolatory. 
Perhaps I was considering the advisability of changing my 
seat. If so, I was spared the trouble, for when Agla- 
vaine uttered the words, " We are waiting for the silence 
to speak ..." the girl in the sailor hat burst into tears 
and ran to the door. 

" Hush, hu-s-h " sounded through the house ! The man 
with the scarlet waistcoat looked up from the pink news- 
paper he had been reading, and saw the girl run past him 
with tears streaming from her eyes. His face expressed 
nothing but the blankest amazement, and he said but one 
word, the word " Criky ! " 

Then, like one moved to investigate a matter further- he 
rose in his seat, beckoned to an attendant and -whispered, 
" Miss, book of the words, please." He turned to the 
title-page, perused it carefully, and indicated something 
with a heavily-ringed finger to his companions. 



S2 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

In the interval I took the air in Sloane-street, trying 
to recover the Maeterlinckian frame of mind which the in- 
terruptions had somewhat disturbed. As I was returning 
down the pit steps the man with the scarlet waistcoat sud- 
denly appeared at the lower landing. He bounded up, and 
said eagerly to me, " I say, Guvnor, is this Maeterlinck 
alive or dead ? " 

" Alive," I answered. 

" Good bis ! " said he, " then I've won half a crown." 



A MISSION SERVICE 

XN Kensington Gardens, on my way to the Albert Hall, 
I met an acquaintance looking miserable. This indi- 
vidual buttonholed me. 

" Yesterday afternoon," he said, " you might have seen 
me standing in the centre of the arena of the Albert Hall, 
tears suffusing my eyes, loudly singing ' A little talk with 
Jesus makes it right — all right.' My emotions exhausted 
me. At tea I ate two pieces of almond cake. That cake 
spoilt everything. Look at me now ! " 

I passed on. 

" Any chance of a seat ? " I asked a policeman. 

" Try the balcony." 

A wild crowd of ticket-holders surged before the main 
entrance. I passed them, and took my place in the line of 
Londoners waiting outside the balcony door. Anxiety 
was written upon their faces ; but I think it arose from a 
fear that they might not secure seats. We struggled up 
the stairs. Through the open doors of the centre section 



A MISSION SERVICE 33 

of the balcony I observed that it was already packed. 
The mariner in the story, having kept ferrets all his life, 
reckoned that he knew something about women. I, know- 
ing something about public meetings, avoided and evaded 
the crowd, ran round the corridor, pushed open the pen- 
ultimate door, and clambered over benches and iron bars, 
until I reached the best position in the Albert Hall — the 
corner seat overlooking the platform. 

A youth tumbled into the adjoining seat. Having 
recovered his breath he addressed me : " Speaking as a 
Christian man, I object strongly that some people," indi- 
cating the arena, " should be given tickets for a religious 
service." 

I turned my back upon him. 

Others scrambled past us. At half-past three the hall 
was full. How many ? Call it ten thousand ! It was a 
strange sight, in the lessening light of a winter afternoon, 
to see that vast assemblage gathered together for a mission 
service. London loves a new thing, or a venerable thing 
focussed in a new light. 

A superhuman task for one man to communicate his 
personality to that audience. Even from my seat the faces 
in the arena were a blur. Four details drew my eyes* 
The word " alto "" on a huge white placard in the choir ; 
the crescent of intent faces, frowning, peering, that swept 
round the front row of the balcony; a soldier in the 
middle of the arena, a vivid red note ; and in the front of 
the stage, a small, dizzy platform reached by steps. 
Behind, below, everywhere I saw that amorphous blur of 
ten thousand silent souls. Who were they.? Why 
had they come ? The Torrey- Alexander gatherings 



34 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

are unemotional. That is their distinction. They 
are conducted by two shrewd, hard-headed Americans, 
who, instead of devoting their brains to railways, or wheat, 
have given themselves heart, body and soul, to Christ. 
They use no symbols ; they have no theology ; they have 
one desire only — to save souls. One cry only — the joy of 
the redeemed, and the unfailing love of Christ. 

What are they like? Mr. Alexander's resemblance to 
somebody troubled me. Ah ! the clue ! He is like Mr. 
Pinero, but half a foot taller. Bald, straight as a tree, he 
wears, like Mr. Torrey, a frock-coat, closely buttoned. 
The shoulders of both men are square ; they speak well 
out from the chest. They are types of the new revivalism. 

Mr. Alexander is a born musical leader, fertile in ideas, 
quick on the trigger. " Only those in the top gallery sing 
the first verse," he said, and they obeyed. The voices of 
women — very few — in the top gallery began, " When I 
survey the wondrous Cross." It moved us. Mr, Alexander 
knew it would. 

In appearance Mr, Torrey is like that agreeable type of 
Englishman, the elderly, well-preserved banker, who travels 
from his estate in Kent every morning by the 10.35, and 
returns by the 4.5. His sermon was precisely the kind of 
sermon that an irreproachable banker would deliver if he 
were suddenly possessed with the desire to save souls. The 
passion of this elderly, well-groomed American is to bring 
the world to Christ. Nothing else matters. He is per- 
fectly straightforward, conceals nothing. He told us that 
when he found he could not cry in his sermons, and con- 
sequently could not save souls, he prayed " O God, give 
me back my tears." His prayer was answered. 



A MISSION SERVICE 35 

I was too far away to observe if he cried, but I was near 
enough to be impressed by the simple gospel of love that 
he preached. The differences of Churchmen, the bewilder- 
ment of creeds do not trouble him. That was what I 
gathered from his sermon that afternoon. Love is the 
magnet. Christ's love for us. Our love for our fellow 
creatures that must bring all to Him. 

" Ever heard Spurgeon ? " said the Christian at my 
elbow. " He 'ad winged words and salty stories. I don't 
call Mr. Torrey an evangelist." 

I escaped. As I clambered back over the seats the choir 
were singing, " When we all get to heaven," not very well, 
and Mr. Alexander was waving his arms at them like an 
angry windmill. 

Before descending the stairs I returned to the balcony 
to see how the hall looked from the central section. A 
blind man, painfully sightless, was being pushed up the 
steps by a tottering old woman. Feeling forward with 
his poor hands, he prepared to descend the three stairs 
into the corridor. It was not easy for him ; he paused 
irresolutely on the top stair. Then happened a thing that 
I think made more impression on me than anything I had 
seen during the afternoon. One of the Stewards, upon 
whose face was that inward illumination shown by those who 
have found peace in Christ, sprang up the stairs, clutched 
the blind man firmly by the arm, and led him down the 
steps with a cheery " Now then ; one, two, three, and 
there's the carpet." The blind man's face brightened. 
The Steward returned blithely to his task of collecting 
hymn-books. I don't think that I was the only looker-on 
who envied that worker for Christ. He had the instinct 



S6 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

to do the kind thing, the real, right thing, at the right 
moment, for another. If the Torrey- Alexander mission 
produces such essential Christians, its mission is fulfilled. 

Many — ^perhaps the majority — of this vast audience did 
not come to the Albert Hall to be converted, nor yet 
entirely from curiosity. They were representative of the 
great multitude throughout the world to whom the Unseen 
brings, in varying degrees, a mystical message : they came 
on the vain quest of hearing that interior message con- 
firmed from a platform, knowing in their hearts that the 
mystery of faith is and must always be wordless and secret. 
To them such missions as this are splendid failures. For 
them rather the message on the Temple of Isis : " I am 
whatsoever has been, whatsoever is, and whatsoever shall 
be. And the veil upon my face no mortal hand has ever 
raised." But to the initiate — that is, to the pure in heart 
— ^the veil is sometimes transparent. 

In the street, men with hoarse voices were selling " The 
Glory Song " ; the same broken-down waster type that sold 
" Crossing the Bar "" when Tennyson died ; that sold 
" Tommy make room for your Uncle " when I was a boy. 

All down Kensington High Street boys were whistling 
" The Glory Song "" ; the same pinched, perky, amusing 
typethat whistled Chopin's " Funeral March " after Queen 
Victoria's funeral ; the same type that whistled " Pop goes 
the Weasel " in the days of our fathers. 

London loves a new thing ! And mighty soon she for- 
gets it. Yet — and yet ! The shepherd knows his sheep. 
The ground knows the seed that in it is darkly germinating. 



A VISION ON THE RHONE 37 



A VISION ON THE RHONE 

X MISSED my opportunity of seeing Provence. The Man 
of Leisure was ready to start ; he had mapped the 
route ; he desired my companionship ; but I thought I was 
busy — and refused to accompany him. He went alone, 
and I have seen Provence only in dreams — her vines and 
sunlit fields, her ancient towns and the tumult of the 
Rhone. 

Yesterday I walked London humming a snatch of song 
I had somewhere sometime read : 

" Fancy yoiCve journeyed down the Rhone, 
Fancy yoiCve passed Vienne, Valence, 
Fancy you've skirted Avignon — 
And so are come en pleine Provence.'''' 

I thought as I walked by Thames-side, of the poem that 
Mistral wrote on the Rhone, the third of his series of long 
works in twelve cantos. I cannot call this unrhymed 
" Poem of the Rhone " a masterpiece, as I have never read 
it, and never shall so long as tongues and dialects exist ; 
but I have read about it. The mere bald analysis of the 
scheme of Mistral's Rhone poem stirs the imagination. 

It sings the end of the old way of river life, the life 
lived and loved before steam : it tells of the voyage 
of a fleet of seven boats from Lyons down to Beaucaire 
and back. They were hauled by eighty horses ; think 
of it ! There is a collision with a steamboat, symbol 
of the new power, the tow-lines break, the old boats are 
wrecked, the cargo scattered, the eighty horses plunged 



38 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

into the water. The steamer continues, the river flows on, 
the ancient castles soar above her banks ; but the slow 
boats and the eighty draught-horses are gone. That 
collision typifies the end of the old days that the poet 
Mistral loves. Yet he still hopes, still peers forward. 
" Ah, how good it is to sail on ceaselessly toward one's 
desire, even though it is but a dream." 

With the name of Mistral one has indeed " come enpleine 
Provence" — modern Provence that winds about her the 
threads of the Old. His is the most adored name in 
Provence ; one of the most honoured in France. How 
does he stand in England ? Of course he is familiar to 
the small literary circle who know everything, and I have 
some acquaintance with him, because when, in 1904, the 
Nobel prize of ,£7825 for imaginative literature was 
divided between him and Jose Echegaray, I wrote a thin 
but enthusiastic article on Frederic Mistral. 

For two days it amused me to ask this question of 
unliterary acquaintances, " What do you know about 
Mistral ? " They knew surprisingly little. One thought 
he was a wind ; another thought he was a place, like the 
Weald of Kent ; and a third, a foolish fellow, remarked 
" Ah ! we don''t produce men like Mistral now." He was 
surprised to hear that MistraPs first long work, the epic 
poem in Provencal called " Mireio," which Lamartine god- 
fathered, was written in 1859 ; that Gounod's opera 
founded upon it was performed in Paris in 1864 ; and that 
Mistral, chief of the seven who founded the Felibrige and 
created a language out of a dialect, is alive to-day, writing 
verse and declaiming it to his friends at Maillane, and 
accepted as the greatest man in Southern France. If the 



A VISION ON THE RHONE 39 

land of the Troubadours is now the land of the Felibres 
it is because Mistral and his companions made their songs 
in the Proven9al language, so that their mothers and 
sweethearts could understand. And France, listening, 
said : " Well done, children of the South ! Henceforth 
you are in us, of us, and honoured." No wiiter in Erse 
has yet heard that welcome call from London. 

Mistral is Provence as Thomas Hardy is Wessex. Wes- 
sex was born with Thomas Hardy, but Provence stretches 
away behind Mistral like ancient London beyond Aldwych 
and Kingsway. Fragments of her history recurred to me 
while I was receiving picture postcards marking the pro- 
gress of my friend the Man of Leisure through the land of 
the Troubadours. He would see Avignon, where, for a 
hundred years, seven Popes lived, until that day 
when Catherine of Siena turned the face of the last 
Avignon Pope to Rome. He would see that place " at 
the foot of some hills "" between Avignon and Vaucluse, 
where Laura lived ; being a man of sentiment, he would 
doubtless seek " the sweet plain where she was born," and 
long, with Petrarch, to see " her tresses loosened to the 
breeze." 

He would see the meadow where Aucassin walked that 
morning in May, when " the daisy flowers that brake 
beneath her as she went tiptoe, and that bent above her 
instep, seemed black against her feet and ankles, so very 
fair was the maid " ; and perhaps he would hear legends 
of the kindly old man calling himself " a prisoner," who 
wrote " Aucassin and Nicolette," sometime in the twelfth 
century. He would see the beauty of the women of 
Aries, see Tarascon, that town of handsome men, and with 



40 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

the name of Tarascon he would think of Daudet, and buy 
a copy of that delightful book, " Lettres de mon Moulin,'''' 
and read it in trains, and on the crests of sunny, flower- 
perfumed hills ; and perhaps, while looking over the sunlit 
land of Provence, which loves the life of the imagination, 
and does not care a button about efficiency, he would 
recall those words of Felix Gras, another Provencal : 
" JTaime mon village plus que ton village: faime ma 
Provence plus que ta province ; jfaiTrw la France plus que 
tout:' 



THOMAS HARDY 

A RE not chance snatches of a page or two, filched from 
"^^ the between-whiles of other occupations, among the 
delights of reading ? To know that it is but a quarter of 
an hour to the Bank Station is to read intently, feverishly, 
to break off eager, and to go forth with the page or two 
drumming in the head. I have carried the pocket edition 
of Mr. Hardy's " Tess " with me for a fortnight, and am 
grieved that dressmakers will not permit women to do like- 
wise. A chapter of this story of a great passion gives a 
background to the day's trivial happenings. Like the 
thought of death, it calms. 

'' . . . Poor wou7ided name ! My bosom a^s a bed 
Shall lodge thee:'' 

That magical line of Shakespeare's stands as of old on 
the title-page. Ill-starred Tess ! Heartsick we watch 
the arms of the Minotaur gathering round this innocent. 



THOMAS HARDY 41 

knowing the end, the bird crushed as in Watts's picture: 
And all the while the rich and spacious background of 
English rural life unfolds before our eyes — the vast lush 
remoteness of the dairy farm at Talbothays ; the meaner 
side at Marlott ; the incisive characterisation of all the folk 
from the dairymaids to Clare's brothers ; the humour of old 
Durbeyfield — " I'm thinking of sending round to all the old 
antiqueeruns in this part of England, asking them to sub- 
scribe to a fund to maintain me " ; the worldly wisdom of 
Mrs. Durbeyfield — " Tess, I say, between ourselves, quite 
private but very strong, that on no account do you say a 
word of your Bygone Trouble to him." 

Every one knows this book ; pens have been active for 
years analysing and appreciating the art of Thomas Hardy. 
He offers no moral : he beckons no converts ; he has no 
private information about the ultimate destiny of man. He 
has desired to state but his vision of the world. In none of 
his books has he so plainly foreshadowed his sense of the 
unpitying and unmoral attitude of the President of the 
Immortals to the mortals who prank about his feet. 
Even love does not save them. The President of the 
Immortals has no pity for love that lacks wisdom. 
*' Tess " is the prologue to Mr. Hardy's great work, 
" The Dynasts." 

Is " Tess of the D'Urbervilles " true to life ? Not true, 
I think, to the life that the average modern knows. A Tess, 
living to-day, could have broken her fate at a dozen points, 
so long as she was not the Tess of Mr. Hardy. Ageless 
Puck would have cut in and severed the cords. Wisdom 
could have helped Tess from the slough ; but true she is to 
the character evolved by Mr. Hardy. Admit his concep- 



42 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

tion of Tess, and nothing could have stayed her steps, inci- 
dentally so blithe, to the scaifold at Wintoncester. She 
budded like a flower, and, unfolding, was harshly plucked. 
..." Poor wounded name ! " All is not right with the 
world in Mr. Hardy's philosophy. 

His prose wails with magnificent mournfulness from the 
ruins where the broken gods lie. Yet his pessimism does 
not depress. He stirs the mind, and when the mind is 
stirred depression flees. Moreover, the world is not as sad 
as Mr. Hardy thinks. I decline to believe in " the chronic 
melancholy which is taking hold of the civilised races with 
the decline of belief in a beneficent Power." 

Mr. Hardy really induces cheerfulness. To follow the 
working of his mind, with its store of material and ever- 
new, closely-packed knowledge of Wessex life, and his 
curious and fascinating power of expression, make for en- 
joyment ; but sometimes the detail is so particularised that 
I fail to see the picture owing to the vividness of the pig- 
ments. Thus : 

" She went stealthily as a cat through this profusion of 
growth, gathering cuckoo-spittle on her skirts, cracking 
snails that were underfoot, staining her hands with thistle- 
milk and slug-slime, and rubbing off* upon her naked arms 
sticky blights which, though snow-white on the apple-tree 
trunks, made blood-red stains on her skin." 

Sometimes there is a hint of unreality in the dialogue, 
as when Clare says, " Tess, fie for such bitterness." Could 
he, could he have used the word " fie " ? 

But the flashes of reality and beauty ! How many they 
are ; 



THOMAS HARDY 48 

"You could sometimes see her twelfth year in her 
cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes." 

" The occasional heave of the wind became the sigh of 
some immense sad soul, conterminous with the universe in 
space, and with history in time."" 

" Why was it that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, 
sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, 
there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it 
was doomed to receive ? " 

" Previsioned by suffering. " 

" I don't mind that ; no woman does when it comes to 
agony-point, and there's no other way." 

How refreshing, too, is his use of words that are not 
worn by constant traffic — " accusatory horror "*' ; " the 
ironical Tishbite " ; "a plume of smoke " ; " grassed down 
and forgotten "; " the stopt-diapason note "; " an untenable 
redemptive theolatry " ; " the geocentric view of things " ; 
" boreal light " ; " autochthonous idlers " ; and many more. 

What a life's work is here ! Creator of Eustacia Vye ; 
author of the Poems; of "The Dynasts"; of "Tess"; 
and of that penetrating and haunting study of the uncom- 
fortable way that the artistic temperament works in man 
—"The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved." 

The appeal of most novelists is to the heart : the author 
of " Tess " drives from the heart to the head. The story 
of the pretty flesh called 'J'ess, the awakening in her of 
that viewless thing we call the soul, is considered and 
weighed by a dispassionate Observer, and told, not as an 
episode, but in relation to the unseen Forces that encom- 
pass kings and dairymaids — you and me. 



44 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

I see that Observer moving here and there in a large 
building, in every room of which is life in flux and flow, 
the little infinite troubles of the heart fluttering against 
ambition and cruelty, joy and grief, with the other pursuits 
of mortals at tea-tables or bedsides. And all the while 
the thunder growls monotonously, sometimes crashing 
overhead, when the folk at the tea-tables look up and are 
frightened. The Observer hears all, sees all, and writes on- 
Some one rises, passes out, and cries at the street corner, 
"Little children, love one another." Another murmurs, 
"Fear not, little flock." The Observer dockets the inter- 
ruptions, and writes on. 



Mr. Hardy will write no more stories ; but his readers 
are not without consolation. His brain is as keen as ever ; 
his intuitions as acute ; his command of words, such right 
words, remains as firm and far-reaching as his mastery over 
sentences. In the peace of his home in Dorchester he 
broods, as of yore, on the undiscoverable ways of the 
" Wilier masked and dumb," and His handling of the 
chattels that are called men and women. 

But Mr. Hardy has changed his method of expression, 
or rather he has sought out an old love, a first love, and 
told her that she, although long slighted, still holds his 
heart. That first love was poetry. Through all the years 
of his allegiance to prose, it was in poetry that he really 
desired to express himself, and the Muse-Mother he 
favoured was Melpomene, rather than Euterpe. While 
writing novels he allowed himself an occasional intimacy 
with poetry. The dates of the poems proclaim that. 



THOMAS HARDY 45 

Now it is to be all poetry, or poetical dramas, such as 
" The Dynasts," with racy prose passages interwoven. 

In his verse, as in his prose, Mr. Hardy is entirely him- 
self and original. His poetry is rarely lyrical ; no glint of 
the Joie de vivre lightens it, although there is humour, 
mordant and ironic. His themes are carved from solemn, 
deep things ; the thunder-thought rises from gloom, like a 
storm-cloud in a Ruysdael landscape, pregnant with pity 
for humanity, struggling beneath the awful sway, blind 
and heedless, of an Immanent Will. Hear him in " The 
Dynasts," where he makes his Spirit Ironic say : 

" The groping tentativeness of an Immanent Will (as 
grey old Years describes it) cannot be asked to learn logic 
at this time of day ! " 

To which the Spirit Sinister answers : 

" Come, Sprite, don''t carry your ironies too far, or you 
may wake up the Unconscious Itself, and tempt It to let all 
the clockwork of the show run down to spite us." 

Mr. Hardy's verse refuses to be forgotten. It haunts. 
His effects are not gained by biting into his theme as with 
an acid, but by his power to vivify a psychological aspect 
of his subject that has stirred his imagination. Sometimes 
he simply states his story in dark lines, leaving the moral 
to the winds, as in " A Tramp Woman's Tragedy." This 
is a novel in a few pages ending, as was inevitable, in 
disaster. Yet it does not depress. Like all true poets, he 
distils beauty from tragedy. There must be many to whom 
the horror of the Boer War is almost condoned by the 
mental picture given in his poem called " The Souls of 



46 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

the Slain," that vision of the dead " sprites without mould," 
rushing home, eager with questions. And the astonishing 
reply they receive ! Is it not most natural ? 

The poet sees the particular in the general, and makes 
it vital. In a poem called " The Ejected Member's Wife," 
Mr. Hardy picked an incident from the unwieldy history 
of the last General Election, moulded it into his strange, 
unpoetical verse, and that incident, the wave of a hand, 
became, for some, the core of the election. It was merely 
a heart-cry, and began so simply : 

" We shall see her no more 
Oil that balcony. " 

Many of the poems have this arresting baldness, the one 
called " She, to Him," for example, which opens : " I will 
be faithful to thee ; aye, I will." 



DANES 

^TROLLING round the collection of Danish pictures 
at the Guildhall, I noticed a gentleman, with the 
complexion of a vegetarian and the eyes of a fanatic, shep- 
herding a flock of men and women. Listening, I discovered 
that he knew little about art, and less about the Danish 
painters whose works he essayed to interpret. But he was a 
kind man. 

Unselfishly he was giving his time and energy to enter- 
tain and uplift an assortment of dwellers in mean streets ; 
but he was a shepherd ignorant of hillside and fold. He 
meant well, but he was a useless guide to the Danish 



^' 



DANES 47 

pictures, sandwiching the visit, I have no doubt, between 
an expedition to the Tower and an exploration of the 
Zoological Gardens. 

Is there a better way ? What method should a guide 
to such a collection adopt ? At the Guildhall was pre- 
sented for the first time in London the art of Denmark 
from the eighteenth century ; but there ^vas no hint on 
frames or in catalogue to indicate which were the early 
indigenous pictures, and which were the productions of the 
modern Danes, who took wing to Paris and became cosmo- 
politan. 

The shepherd, with his flock from mean streets, began 
in the first gallery, obviously the most modern and least 
Danish of all, and went steadily through to the fourth 
gallery, which was essentially Danish, and contained curious 
examples of eighteenth-century Danish portraiture. He 
paused before each picture, and by the time he reached 
the last the impression of Danish art in the minds of his 
flock must have been as chaotic a blur as the impression of 
America or Switzerland in the minds of country cousins 
who emerge gasping into the street after a lightning trip 
in a Hale's tour railway carriage. Is there a better way ? 

I think I should have taken the flock straight to Gallery 
Four, which contained two works by Pilo, portrait painter, 
who was bom before Sir Joshua Reynolds, and who died in 
the same year, 1792. Pilo would make them laugh, so 
pompous and pretentious is he. Then I should have in- 
troduced them to Eckersberg, father of the Danish school, 
who was nine years of age when Sir Joshua died ; then to 
Jensen, who was the best of the lot, the prize boy of 
eighteenth-century Danish portraiture. 



48 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

It was not a great school, but it is interesting to reflect 
that in the mighty period of English portraiture a school, 
infantile compared with ours, but nevertheless a school, 
rose and, so to speak, flourished in Denmark. And I do 
not suppose one Englishman knew of its existence. 

Having finished with Pilo, Eckersberg and Jensen, I 
think I would have been content to show my flock the 
works of two painters, and temporarily to ignore all the 
rest. These two, Kroyer and Hammershoi, are typical — 
Kroyer of the cosmopolitan Danes, Hammershoi of the 
home-loving art Danes. 

The work of Kroyer I should choose for examination is 
the huge canvas called The Committee of French Artists 
for the Exhibition in Copenhagen in 1888. Denmark is 
justly proud of this tremendous effort of handicraft from 
the brush of her foremost painter. 

It is marvellously clever, and very interesting, but it is 
not Danish, and although a swagger example of painting 
in the style that is familiar at the Paris salons, nobody 
would call it a great work of art. Whistler would have 
tucked his monocle into his eye, gazed at it, and, turning 
away with that inimitable shrug of the shoulders, would 
have uttered one word, his pet word, " Amazing ! " 

Kroyer, the painter of it, has a European reputation, 
and has long outsoared the confines of little Denmark. 
Probably no living man could have succeeded better than 
he in grouping thirty-one personages round a table, show- 
ing each face, giving to each proper prominence, and 
making the spectator feel that such a sardine-packed 
gathering is possible in Copenhagen or anywhere else. 
These eminent French painters and connoisseurs must feel 



DANES 49 

very uncomfortable ; one cannot move without jostling 
his neighbour ; yet they look perfectly happy : they are 
sitting for their portraits, they have been made immortal. 
I see here for the first time the faces of great men whose 
names have been familiar to me from childhood. Kroyer 
has done his best, and the reflection of his fame illumines 
Denmark. Only a Rembrandt or a Frans Hals could 
make these Guild or Corporation pictures into works of 
art. 

Kroyer stands for the painter who leaves the parental 
roof, casts the home influences away like doffed raiment, 
and learns strange and not necessarily better lessons in 
the wide school of the world. Wilhelm Hammershoi 
stands for the painter who remains beneath his father's 
roof, and paints through the long years, lovingly and very 
beautifully, simple themes in which he sees ever more and 
more wonder. Somewhere in Denmark there is a house 
built as our quieter forefathers knew how to build, austere 
and spacious, and furnished with the simple charm of an 
interior in a Dutch picture. In such a house Hammershoi 
has watched the grey light of day transform surfaces and 
walls, and the sunlight stream through tall windows over 
swept and garnished floors. 

He has painted these interiors under the magic influences 
of light. 

Yes, Wilhelm Hammershoi is a stay-at-home, and no 
wonder, if his own living-rooms have the beautiful simpli- 
city of furniture and walls in the interiors that he paints. 
He has sat in these rooms day by day, month by month, 
perhaps year by year, watching and loving the stealthy 
light, as Vermeer did, creeping through the tall windows. 



so THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

touching walls and surfaces to beauty and making the still 
shadows steal out, hide themselves, and peep forth again. 
Sunlight too ! Those were great days when he saw the 
beams feeling their way beneath severe couch and table, 
the particles of dust dancing in a straight shaft of sun- 
light, the grey light stealing through the doors opening 
from a room, and the feel of the rain outside seen 
through muslin curtains. Like Le Sidaner, he does not 
worry us with " human interest." The back of one girl in 
shadow is enough. And when he goes walking his per- 
sonality remains with him. He saw the two landscapes he 
exhibited through his own eyes — not through the convention 
of M. Didier-Pouget or Mr. Leader. They may not be the 
landscape that I watched yesterday above the valley of the 
Chess, or last week from a Cornish hill ; but they are his 
landscape, his impression of Nature as selected and seen 
through a temperament. Yes, for me the Danish Exhibi- 
tion meant the advent of Wilhelra Hammershoi. 



MODERN DUTCHMEN 

XS there in the whole history of art another instance of 
three members of one family who have attained the 
eminence reached by James, Matthew, and William Maris ? 
Their father was a printer who lived at the Hague, and 
spent an arduous life bringing up a family of five children 
— three sons and two daughters. The girls married and 
died, the three sons have made the name of Maris famous. 
James, the eldest of the brothers, who stands in the fore- 
front of the modern school of Dutch landscape painters, 



MODERN DUTCHMEN 51 

died at the Hague in 1899, at the age of sixty-two ; 
William, the youngest, and the least distinguished of the 
three, resides in Holland, " aware, no doubt, of his own 
importance in the world, but too sensitive and modest to 
assert himself unduly." 

Matthew lives in retirement in a London suburb. He is 
not a popular painter ; no flag ever waves above a street 
announcing an exhibition of his pictures ; there is no work 
by him in any public exhibition in London, and yet I do 
not suppose any other living painter is held in such esteem 
by his " few but fit " admirers. The titles of his pictures 
convey but little — Feeding Chickens^ Souvenir of 
Amsterdam, He Comes, The Flower, The Christening, 
The Four Mills. Yet when you look at them you feel 
that the man has something to say — something more to 
say than other men. He paints a girl holding a saucepan 
over a fire, and this small picture becomes the abiding 
memory of the Mesdag collection at the Hague. He 
paints the Outskirts of a Town, merely a view of no- 
man''s-land rubbish heaps with its frontier huddle of 
mean houses, and political waverers are disposed to vote 
Liberal because the Prime Minister became the owner, 
some years ago, of this lovely suggestion of the spirit 
of place. 

For years I have known the work of Matthew Maris. 
Now, in the pages of Mr. Croal Thomson's monograph, 
the man is revealed in certain letters, human documents, 
written to Mr, Thomson. I almost wish I had not read 
them. The dim picture of Matthew, the mystic, using 
paint in the magical way that Keats used words, is bitten 
over with the hard lines of Matthew the letter-writer. 



52 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

troubled about money, prattling of his "pot-boilers." 
I am content to let the life pass : it is the work that 
coimts. 

No wonder that the Dutch were and are great landscape 
painters. The infinite distances, the pearly light, the brim- 
ming waterways, the moisture and the pale sunshine, are a 
daily inspiration to every child of nature. And the flowers ? 
They lie in bands of brilliant colour across the meadows, 
and in the foreground you see a Boer farm-house enfolded in 
trees, and the black kine advancing to the call of the blue- 
bloused milkman. 

James Maris died in landscape land, William lingers 
there ; but Matthew, that strange Matthew, has long left 
it to follow the gleam of his inward visions near Lord's 
cricket ground in St. John's Wood. Strange are the ways 
of men ! 



OLD DUTCHMEN 

■VT^OU may see the masterpiece on presenting a visiting 
-*- card, any morning between 10 and 11.30 ; but a 
stranger should take a cab from Amsterdam station. By 
his own efforts he will hardly find this solemn Dutch man- 
sion on the Heeren-Gracht, where the descendants of Bur- 
gomaster Six, Rembrandt's friend, live. 

The name Six is painted upon the lintel of the basement 
doorway ; you ring, enter, and are taken upstairs to the 
small picture-gallery, then down through the various 
apartments to the parlour facing the street. 

Until the moment of entering the parlour I had not been 



OLD DUTCHMEN 53 

conscious of any excitement save the pleasurable emotions 
of seeing fine pictures in a venerable Dutch house. But 
the sight of Burgomaster Six dominating the room was 
as thrilling as seeing the sun suddenly break through the 
clouds on the morning of a holiday. 

Most of the great Rembrandt portraits are familiar to 
me, but here was something different, something added to 
his achievement, another laurel to his crown. 

In this portrait he challenges Velasquez and Frans Hals, 
those great masters of the technique of painting. There 
is no elaboration about the workmanship ; it is crisp and 
clean cut as a prism, quick as the crack of a whip, seeming 
as if Rembrandt painted his friend right away, the work 
of a few hours. He knew the face so well ; he had 
nothing to learn from watching it, and there was no one 
who could tell him anything he did not know about his 
craft. 

One day Rembrandt was standing in the hall of Six's 
house in Amsterdam, perhaps waiting for his friend to join 
him in an art treasure hunt. Jan Six descends the stairs 
dressed in his fine clothes, the pale grey doublet and the 
short red mantle with its trimmings of gold braid. He is 
leisurely pulling on his buckskin gloves, his long, crimped, 
tawny hair falls upon his plain collar, and the large, medi- 
tative face is crowned with a black hat. 

I do not think that he sees Rembrandt, but Rembrandt, 
peering up from beneath, watches him, while the light from 
the hall window falls full upon the tawny face and sump- 
tuously garbed figure. Rembrandt knows that this is the 
moment. 

Did Jan Six consent to pose on the stairs where Rem- 



54 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

brandt first saw him, or did he walk over to the crowded 
studio in the Jews' quarter where Rembrandt painted his 
masterpieces and helped to ruin himself collecting pictures 
and bric-a-brac ? 

That we shall never know ; but we do know that in this 
portrait Rembrandt for a few hours was carried beyond 
himself, and painted the thing as it is with unerring skill; 
and, as regards the hands and the clothes, with a mastery 
that only Frans Hals could have rivalled. 

The head is pure Rembrandt ; the alert, nervous, swift 
brushwork of the hands, gloves, and clothes, each stroke set 
down and left, easily and finally as the ribs of sand upon 
a sea shore, are Rembrandt in an hour when, by some 
happy fusion of well-being and sympathy, he struck 
out of his genius a faculty that helped him once and not 
again. 

The bare right hand is slowly drawing the glove over the 
left, accommodating the fingers to their compartments ; the 
slight tension of the effort is marked on the knuckles of the 
bare hand. The quick- painting of this movement, which 
still seems to be going on, contrasts with the quiet strokes 
of paint that make the gold braid of the mantle, the 
shadows in the creases of the doublet, and the blobs of pig- 
ment becoming, at a little distance, buttons. 

The technique is extraordinarily modern — the perfection 
of swift impressionist painting long, long before the word 
was invented. Were I writing a story around this portrait 
I should pretend that Rembrandt painted no more than 
the head, and that Frans Hals amused himself and the 
Burgomaster by adding the hands and clothes. Possibly 
Rembrandt considered the hands unfinished and wished 



OLD DUTCHMEN SB 

to work upon them ; but Jan Six, expert and connoisseur, 
said "No." 
Wise Jan Six. 



I stood in the old Town Hall of Haarlem gazing, asto- 
nished, at the seven groups of men, and the group of 
women by Frans Hals. The painting of the accessories — 
clothes, sashes, banners — of these members of the Dutch 
Doelen or shooting-parties are as fine as anything that has 
ever been done in the realm of art, but never do they dis- 
tract the eye from the characterisations of the men them- 
selves. These proud Dutch burghers gathered round the 
supper-table, or ready to march forth to the wars, seem 
alive. A tailor could cut his cloth from their dresses ; an 
armourer could fashion his weapons from their halberds ; 
an historian could write the self-indulgent life of Michiel 
de Waal as he appears painted by Hals in 1616, one 
of the group of the Archers of St. George, and as he 
looks in the group of the Archers painted twenty-three 
years later. 

Frans Hals seems to have painted without effort. What 
his eye saw his hand could set down, and from all we 
know of him it is plain that he regarded his gift merely as 
a means of living, as a carpenter regards his capacity to 
make a good chair. Hals had no fancies about the sanctity 
or the responsibility of genius. 

He never painted a religious, classical, or historical sub- 
ject. There is no hint of a moral motive in any of his 
works ; he painted merely to live. To us a Frans Hals in 
any exhibition stands out as a feat of craftsmanship so 



56 THK DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

superb that the word genius is the only word that can be 
used. It is always so. Who can forget his Admiral de 
Ruyter at a recent Old Masters' exhibition at Burlington 
House ? 

I hear some one say " Yes, but Time has dignified those 
Doelen Haarlem pictures." That may be ; but there are 
acres of corporation or Doelen pictures in Holland painted 
about the same time. Time has not been able to vivify 
their varying degrees of woodenness. 

His work sometimes fell short of perfection ; but the 
cause was not advancing years. At eighty- two he applied to 
the municipality for relief, and at eighty-four he painted 
his masterpiece — the prim old women manageresses of the 
Haarlem almshouses seated round a table. Amazing ! 

James Northcote, R.A., said a good thing about Hals : 
" He was able to shoot the bird flying — so to speak — with 
all its freshness about it, which Titian does not seem to 
have done." 






MARCH 



MARCH 



A PRACTICAL MYSTIC 

^^N Sunday morning a child passed the house holding 
^-^ a dove pressed to her bosom. That was the third 
time, within a week, I had seen a child carrying a white 
bird. 

I told the doctor, who is half chemist, half visionary, 
about it. " Three times in a week," I said. " What do 
you make of it ? " 

He passed my question, and continued to quote Vaughan. 
When he had murmured the climacteric lines — 
" OJbr that night ! where I in Him 
Might live invisible and dim / " 

he proceeded, in his quick way, to sort into three classes 
the inhabitants of this sea-girt isle who inherit from the 
holy men of old time. 

" There are those who have the full spiritual vision like 
Vaughan," he began, " divisible into the articulate and 
the inarticulate ; those like myself, who give up thinking 
about the unthinkable, and forget the gulfs in work ; the 
third class is the largest : my brother, the vicar, is an 
example. They must have the strings of dogma neatly 
tied round the package of their faith. The rest of mankind 
are either advancing to or returning from one of these 
three classes. They don't count. They are the Laodiceans 
of life." 

59 



60 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

Presently I said — " But what about the child and the 
white bird ? It's bothering me. It connects with some- 
thing ; but I can't remember. Three times in the week, 
mind you ! " 

"Ask my brother, the vicar," said the doctor, "he'll 
know. You'll catch him on his way back from church." 
Then he smiled and returned to his microscope. 

I set out to seek the vicar. In life things happen casually 
like this. Therein it differs from fiction. That ridge of 
table-land, where the church stands, bordering the common 
and the swan-pond, stretches across the county ; at either 
end is a small straggling town. A white road runs over 
the ridge, fringed by grass, and midway are the swan-pond 
and the vicarage gates. Below, to right and left, is a vast 
valley ending only in the haze of infinity. 

When I had climbed the hill from the eastern town, 
where the doctor lives, I again passed the child with the 
dove wrapped in her shawl, and I wondered vaguely how 
long she would take to walk the three miles to the western 
town, and whether, when she bent her head to whisper to 
the bird, she would escape the peril of the motors which 
rushed from town to town in a few minutes. 

As I walked Mozart's Religious March from ''The 
Magic Flute," which the doctor had been playing the night 
before, wailed to my steps, and Vaughan's lines returned. 
I remembered the exact intonations and intensity of the 
doctor's voice, and his remark that such spiritual vision 
was far beyond the reach of mere theology — new, old, 
or transitional. " But the two can go together," he 
added. 



A PRACTICAL MYSTIC 61 

" There is in God — some say — 
A deep hut dazzling darkness ; as men here 
Say it is late and dusky, because they 

See not all clear. 
O for that night ! where I in Him 
Might live invisible and dim I " 

London and man seemed far remote. Those who were 
walking from the eastern to the western town were detached, 
removed as by death. They talked, but no words reached 
me, those animated figures seemed infinitesimal under the 
arch of sky and the distances stretching either side of the 
ridge. Even the motor-cars, their flash and trail of odour, 
made no impression on the serenity of the day ; but, strange 
to say, that child walking with the bird in her bosom 
seemed to be of it ; all else was alien. Then the " Religious 
March " began again ; again I heard the doctor murmuring 
Vaughan, and so I came to the swan-pond, where three 
men were fishing. 

I walked round to the gate, leaned against it, waiting 
for the vicar, and looked at the water. The wind blew 
the ripples outward from the bank, and each small wavelet 
moved so quickly that one could never say, " Now it is 
here, now there," but each was part of the parent water, in 
minute but conscious union, dim, but not invisible when 
the sun lighted the water. 

Then the doctor — that insistent doctor — was again 
visualised before me. I saw his white hands at the 
piano, but now he was playing the " Nachtstiick " 
of Schumann, not crisp and ad libitum, in the pro- 
fessional way, but slowly, cajolingly, as one often does 



62 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

when playing for personal pleasure ; and I again heard 
his quick voice distinguishing between natural and spi- 
ritual vision. I wondered if that was the difference 
between the faith that depends upon evidence and the faith 
that rests upon — faith, and if there was not some simple 
form of belief that the wayfarer through this world could 
always hold in secret, as if the science of theology had 
never been, as if each child and man stood alone beneath 
the sky, unbeholden to any predecessor — saint, or casuist, 
or official Christian. As I reflected, watching the water, 
the child passed the gate, onward to the western town, and 
behind her walked the vicar. 

He pressed me to stay to luncheon, and told me what I 
desired to know. " The idea is in Bede," he said ; " the 
Venerable Bede, to whom we are indebted for so many fine 
and uplifting thoughts. It was used by Pater very charm- 
ingly. Allow me to read you the passage : 

' A white bird, she told him once, looking at him gravely, 
a bird which he must carry in his bosom across a crowded 
public place — his own soul was like that.' " 

When I left the vicarage, late in the afternoon, I walked 
to the western town, but did not see the child again. The 
day seemed complete ; yet something remained. I called 
at the cottage of an old friend, who keeps a greengrocer's 
shop, and manages also a husband, two sons, a daughter, 
and a house — manages all perfectly. 

I told her about the white dove and the crowded public 
place of the world, and asked her if she did not think that 
bird-soul was enough — all the beacon the wayfarer needs. 

She looked at me, the lines of her face puckered. 

'' Lor ! " she said, " what things you flighty gentlemen 



MUSIC AND DAFFODILS 63 

do think of. When I used to go to places of worship and 
heard their talk all about words, and authorities, and in- 
terpretations, and their quarrels, I got to think their 'aint 
no 'eaven at all. They couldn"'t tell me how to keep Lizzie 
a good girl, could they ? but I knew. I'm an old woman 
now, and I know, too, that Faith don't depend upon evidence 
like a murder trial, or what's written in books. It's in we, 
and we ought to show religion in our lives, and not always 
be jawin'. And now, Sunday or no Sunday, if you'll kindly 
move I'll get on with my work. You're sitting on the 
duster ! " 

Is she, I wonder, a Practical Mystic, that rare flower of 
religion ? 



MUSIC AND DAFFODILS 

X STOOD in the vestibule of the Queen's Hall and 
watched the arrival of the musical enthusiasts. The 
type is as definite as the soldier or barrister, but far re- 
moved from their set forms. The face of the musician is 
mobile, his eyes eager ; emotion has lined and pale-coloured 
his complexion. But, above all, he has the air of a listener, 
of one whose greatest joy is in detachment from everything 
but sound. The ear initiates him to ecstasy. He asks no 
companionship but the wings of his soul. 

As I watched the musical enthusiasts pressing forward 
to the symphony concert, suddenly there was a break in the 
moving throng, and the Blind advanced, their sticks tap- 
ping the pavement as they felt their way to the staircase. 
Slowly these afflicted — six of them — passed through the 



64 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

lane that the musical enthusiasts made. Three, quite 
sightless, were led by their companions, whose eyes still 
saw a glimmer of the world. Soon, to these Blind, one 
who was deaf would bring consolation, and upon their ears 
would fall the opening slow movement, that forlorn, lovely 
melody of Beethoven's " Leonora " overture. He was 
stone deaf when Fidelio was rewritten in 1814, and some 
can never hear Beethoven played without recalling that 
scene when a tumult of applause followed the dying cadence 
of a symphony he had been conducting. Beethoven stood 
motionless, hearing nothing, except, perhaps, some in- 
terior harmony that worked behind the useless ears. 

So he broods, segregated from the mass, in the bust by 
M. Bourdelle. The heavy hair, clustered like folded wings, 
presses upon the head, as if only the armoury of that 
massive bronze could contain the weight of thought and 
emotion in the drawn-down face. On the pedestal of this 
bust the sculptor has carved " Moi je suis Bacchus qui 
presse pour les hommes le ?ieciar delicieux.'''' M. Bour- 
delle has shown the essential Beethoven, as M. Rodin 
showed the essential Balzac. I wonder why a woman, a 
stranger, after looking at the Beethoven bust, said audibly 
— « Horrible thing ! " 

It would be a real pleasure to permit those six Blind, 
who are now seated, waiting for " Leonora No. 3 " to begin, 
to pass fingers slowly over the Beethoven bust, and watch 
the wonder on their faces. That small consolation should 
be granted them, for, strange to say, it was sight as well 
as sound that drew musical London to this symphony con- 
cert. The Blind, poor things, could not see the novelty — 
a great conductor, discarding the baton, and using his 



MUSIC AND DAFFODILS 65 

hands and arms only to control and encourage his 
orchestra. 

They could not see this tall and burly Russian, waiting 
in the silence that preceded the opening of the " Leonora " 
overture, rolling each hand, quickly and nervously, turn by 
turn, in the palm of the other ; they could not know that 
M. Wassili Savonoff is quite unlike the musical type — a 
definite exception. He stands like a soldier, he looks like 
a soldier, and it has been said of him that Russia lost a 
great general when Savonoff became a conductor. This 
soldier-musician has magnetism. Tyrannical and cajoling, 
quick as rifle-fire, and wheedling as a woman. Why has 
no one discarded the baton before ? The stiff rod, severing 
a conductor from his musicians, cuts the electric current 
that, from first note to last, should flow in lightning 
circles ; but the magnetic fluid passes unimpeded by baton 
through M. SavonofTs fingers, pointing, outstretched, 
clenched ; through his arms darting, waving, gathering 
the melody in falling cadence, and storming it up- 
wards ; through head and body moving in unison to the 
movements of arms and fingers — why, it was a living 
picture, a bioscope, of the personalities of Beethoven, 
Mozart, and Tchaikovsky that the Russian evoked from his 
musicians. 

Somewhere in the dim hall sat those six Blind, seeing 
nothing, but they heard the forlorn melody of the 
" Leonora "" gather strength, soar to hope, burst out into 
the trumpet-call, and end in the rushing passage for 
strings, and the final pa;an of joy ; they heard the spring 
loveliness, dainty as porcelain, of Mozart's " Serenade in 
G " for strings, and at last Tchaikovsky's tremendous 



66 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

" Symphony No. S,"" where Russian met Russian, the living 
man — artist barbarian if you will — tingling his musicians, 
exciting them, and racing them on to the Finale, arms and 
hands acting the music with incredible swiftness, throwing 
it into the void, and crashing to the end amid thunders of 
applause. 

And yet it was not Tchaikovsky, but Beethoven, who 
remained with me when the flushed musical enthusiasts 
trooped out — Beethoven speaking from the deep, not the 
thunder-rage of Tchaikovsky. 

Tap ! tap ! went the sticks of the Blind upon the stairs. 
Over them I felt the presence of deaf Beethoven, and from 
somewhere seemed to come ancient words telling of a time 
when the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of 
the deaf shall be unstopped. 

Tap ! tap ! went the sticks upon the pavement, where 
daffodils, bunches and baskets, were being offered for sale. 
The solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall blos- 
som as the rose. And a highway shall be there 

Tap ! tap ! through the traffic, by the daffbdils. 



MUSICAL PICTURES 

1V/TEM0RY stirred and opened. I saw, in visual pictures, 
"^ past scenes of music that I imagined had long gone 
to oblivion : I saw that night at Trouville when I entered 
the casino while the orchestra was playing Mozart's Adagio 
and Fugue in C Minor for strings, and beneath a red- 
shaded lamp perceived, with the sudden shock of pleasure 
that one has in suddenly sighting a rainbow, a young 



ii 



MUSICAL PICTURES 67 

woman exquisitely dressed, sitting erect and tense, her lips 
tightly pressed together, her piquant, sensitive face hardly 
able to bear the emotions with which the adagio over- 
whelmed her. By her side, curled up in a deep chair, a 
child slept peacefully, her long, black-stockinged legs 
lying across her mother's pink Paris frock. It was a vision 
of Classical Music, its eifect upon the mondame and upon 
innocence, 

I saw an emotional eddy in the gallery of Covent Garden 
Theatre during the great love-duet in the second act of 
Tristan and Isolde; a German, standing in front of me, 
swung slowly round as on a pivot, moving his hands as he 
did so until they clutched ther ailings behind his back 
and a little spurt of blood issued from where the nails dug 
the flesh. 

I saw the silent highly-trained audience, the aristocracy of 
musical London, at a Joachim quartette recital at vanished 
St. James's Hall. There was little abandon about that 
assembly : they showed an almost painful appreciation, a 
palpable fear of losing a shade of the supreme interpreta- 
tion by that matchless four, oblivious of self, working 
together, eager only to merge and tell their sublime tale 
in perfect harmony. 

I saw a large music-room in Switzerland, snow without, 
warmth within. A woman entered, and, thinking herself 
alone, cried aloud, " I feel like Chopin to-day." Seating 
herself at the piano, she began to play, and one by one the 
guests at the hotel, hearing the music, entered noiselessly, 
and I do not think she realised how many the magnet of 
her execution had drawn to that Alpine music-room until 
she ceased playing, gazed around, started and flushed. 



68 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

I saw the interior of a theatre. I have forgotten the 
name of the piece, and I know not whether it was tragedy 
or comedy or buffoonery ; but I do know that between the 
second and third acts the orchestra played selections from 
Gounod's Mireille, and lo ! there was Mistral, and I was in 
Provence, with song and dance, sunshine and the vine, and 
the Rhone rushing tumultuously to the sea. 

I saw the musical pictures that the French have painted 
so often in recent years — saw that scene in the vestibule at 
a Lamoureux concert, showing those who were unable to 
gain admission huddled in groups upon the floor, caught 
in the very act and attitude of musical emotion, oblivious 
of discomfort, listening fascinated. 

I saw a room where Beethoven was being played. A 
pale girl sat near me. Beethoven's solemn harmonies 
swept around us. We were rapt to silence, inner joy. 
Then suddenly our emotions were confronted with the 
desolation that followed the last chords. 

The pale girl sighed. " I must hear more, more, more ! 
I shall return to town to-morrow. Find me a London 
paper. I must see the programmes of the concerts." 

With some difficulty I unearthed a two-days-old London 
journal from beneath the couch. 

She ran her finger down the programmes of concerts 
announced on the front page. " Ah ! ' Mon cosur s'oeuvre 
a ta voix^ by Saint-Saens. That's the limit," she said 
emphatically. " More than that song says can't be said. 
It's the limit." 

She appeared to make it a personal matter. 

Having nothing else to say, I said "Oh ! " Then, feeling 
lliat ejaculation was too curt, I added " Ah ! " and was on 



JONATHAN AND THE TREE 69 

the point of extending my remarks to " Indeed ! " when 
she rose suddenly and swept towards the Musician. 



JONATHAN AND THE TREE 

XT was long since I had seen the old man. How had the 
winter served him ? If, as I feared, rheumatism had 
held him to his cottage through the wet weeks, then my 
news would cheer. For as I walked through the woods I 
had seen signs of spring — here a crocus just pushing through 
the earth, there a primrose, and in a cottage garden a 
splash of yellow aconite. Spring was coming. That was 
something to tell him. 

But the cottage was empty, so I climbed the hilJ, sure 
that I knew where to find him. He was sitting on a log, 
but there was that in his face that checked speech. In 
truth it was an ill-pleasing sight that met my eyes. Trees 
littered the ground on every side : some lay undisturbed 
where they fell, on others the saw had already been at 
work, and in the midst of the clearing a great excavation 
was being dug for the new reservoir. The men had ceased 
work for the day, but their paraphernalia for digging was 
scattered about, and everything was smirched with the 
oozy yellow clay. That clearing in the wood was like a 
battlefield, with fallen trees instead of men, and Jonathan, 
who had known those trees all his life, felt their death as 
if they had been comrades. Time, of course, would make 
all seemly. Far below I could see other reservoirs, three 
of them, that had been finished many years, and already 
new trees were growing about their banks. Very beautiful, 



70 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

from that height, looked the still blue water that filled 
those old reservoirs. This I hinted to Jonathan, but he 
was too old to permit the future to atone for the present. 
" Tve known them trees," he said, " for seventy years, and 
to see them now lying there, and the saw going at them, 
why — it's cruel. Water, more water, what do simple folk 
want with a constant supply ? I've drawed all the water 
I want fi'om the well since I was a boy, and IVe sat under 
them trees all my life. Now they're being cut up into 
planks ; and folk will forget that there were ever any 
trees here. There was a piece of poetry you once read 
to me about asking the earth not to forget." I humoured 
him : 

^' Forget not. Earth, thy disappointed Dead ! 
Forget not. Earth, thy disinherited ! 
Forget not the forgotten ! " 

" Go on," he said — 

" Imperial Future, when in countless train 
The generations lead thee to thy throne, 
Forget 7iot the Forgotten and Unknown.''^ 

He rose and led the way through the wood where here we 
saw a primrose, and there a crocus, but the old man was 
not in the mood to welcome spring. On he strode making 
for the Father of the Forest. I knew whither he was 
going. He paused before the oak, and gazed mutely 
at the great trunk. " You can't tell how old this tree be. 
Five hundred years growing, five hundred years standing 
still, and five hundred years decay. This one's waiting. 
He hasn't growed for a hundred years." 



USEFUL DEATH 71 

The old man looked, then said quietly — " He endured 
as seeing Him who is invisible." 



USEFUL DEATH 

X HAD been reading about Turner. 

He was a silent and lonely man, preferring his 
dreams to the talk of his contemporaries. One day in his 
latter years an artist, entering a public-house, found the 
great old man seated in the corner with his glass before 
him. " I didn't know you used this house," he remarked ; 
" I shall often drop in now on the chance of finding you." 
Said Turner, scrambling to his feet, " Will you ? I don't 
think you will." 

Reading on, reading on — presently I had the impulse to 
visit the Tate Gallery, where four valedictory pictures by 
Turner are displayed among those beautiful works by him 
recovered from the cellars of the National Gallery. Above 
them is a tablet bearing this inscription : 

" These four pictures were the last works sent by J. M. 
W. Turner to the Royal Academy. They were exhibited 
in 1850, the year before his death." 

I examined them, first singly, then in the mass, and an 
idea that erstwhile had been vague became coherent. 
These pictures have classical titles ; the subjects are con- 
cerned with Mercury, JEneas, and Dido ; but that counts 
for nothing. For years Turner had lived in dreamland, 
with nature as his intimate companion, and in these pic- 
tures I perceived the last triumphant failure of the man 



72 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

to report the wonder of the visible universe with the 
inadequate means at the disposal of even the ripest genius. 
His eagle vision soared in those last years above his power 
of expression. He saw the portals of Infinity, dreamed 
incommunicable dreams, and had only a white canvas and 
a few paints at his service. What Mercury, JEneas, and 
Dido are doing in these scenes of splendid failure I have 
not the remotest notion, and I do not want to be told. 
I see only an ethereal shimmer of opalescent colour, golds, 
blues and reds mingling in rainbow mists ; and always 
there is a pathway — faint, fair, and lovely — sweeping out- 
ward to the sea, and arching luminous sky. They are 
pictures of release, of the open fairy gate, mundane 
attempts, final attempts, to express the inexpressible before 
the silence fell. " They all look the same, don't they ? " 
said a visitor in my hearing. They do. They are Turner''s 
swan-song of the beauty of the world. Four canvases ! 
One song ! 

I looked at no more pictures that day. 

Walking home along the Chelsea Embankment, I came 
in time to that little muddled, muddy, unimproved section 
of Thames-side between Grosvenor Road and Westminster, 
where hay barges unload. Wondering why the Embank- 
ment has not been driven through this mess, dodging 
waggons, avoidingcranes, thinking of Turner's self-sufficiency, 
suddenly three lines from Wordsworth's " Prelude " came 
to my lips. They are not great words ; but they fitted my 
Turnerian thoughts. 

"... How •vain 
A correspondence with the talking world 
Proves to the most.'''' 



USEFUL DEATH 73 

Wordsworth, towards the end of his life, found words 
all too inept for his rarefied thought, as Turner found 
colour too material for his lovely dreams. Mortal tools 
could not fashion their glimpses of immortality. Words 
and paint lagged behind thought and vision, until Useful 
Death eased their mystic agonies. 

Drawing near to Westminster I tried to recall the fine 
passage where Professor Raleigh treats this subject in his 
book on " Wordsworth "" : 

" He pressed onward to a point where speech fails and 
drops into silence, where thought is baffled, and turns back 
upon its own footsteps." 

As I repeated these words I became aware that wretched 
ragged men were passing me and crossing the road. They 
halted in front of a great bare Salvation Army shelter, one 
of those gaunt buildings where, in the words of Mr. Bram- 
well Booth's advertisement : 

" Six thousand persons sleep under our care nightly ; 
where thousands are assisted by work and food ; where 
1500 unemployed find work daily; where 900 homeless 
wanderers are fed at two o'clock each morning ; where 
hundreds of slum children are relieved ; where many are 
turned away through lack of means ; where <£*10 will re- 
lieve hundreds." 

The applicants stretched in a long line down the street 
waiting — waiting. On the great wooden, closed doors 
were scrawled in chalk letters the words "Full Up." 
Screened by a lamp-post, for one cannot be seen prying at 
such destitution, I watched these unhappy failures, waiting 



74 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

and shivering, hungry and hopeless. I had been near to 
the height of vision and thought. Here was the depth of 
physical distress, numbed and dumb, pushed to its limit. 

I walked on. And as I walked a friend and consoler 
seemed Useful Death, impersonally relieving the intolerable 
strain of penury, vision, and thought. 



«AN EXQUISITE LITTLE MASTER" 
T/TTATTEAU died of consumption at the age of thirty- 
seven. Somewhere in the world is a portrait of 
the afflicted man, drawn by himself, called " Watteau 
Laughing^'' and described as "frightfully thin, almost 
deathlike." There you have the real Watteau — attenuated 
form, emaciated face, himself drawn by himself: — laughing. 

Consumptives with creative gifts are never normal. 
Watteau laughed at the pageant of life, was amused. 
Beardsley, another consumptive, was more bitter : there 
was a terrible irony in his amusement. Keats found relief 
in the music of words, Mozart in melody. All try to 
escape from the world of realism and hard facts, seeking 
relief in a land of the imagination where it is always 
summer, where love neither changes nor fades, and the 
silken-sailed boat is always ready to sail for Cythera. 

I do not think my friend Mr. Tibbits, of Mincing-lane, 
would find much entertainment in the pictures of Watteau, 
or in his marvellous drawings. 

" Pretty," he would say, " very pretty and dainty, but 
they tire me. They're pictures for the boudoir. I want 
more backbone and force — something I can get my teeth 



«AN EXQUISITE LITTLE MASTER" 75 

into." I can quite understand that Watteau's silken, doll- 
like woman and beribboned men, reclining in glades, toying 
with flowers, listening to love whispers and music with the 
same languid interest, never satiated because their thistle- 
down inclinations never surge into desire : I can quite 
understand that these pretty powdered ladies and feminine 
cavaliers bore Mr. Tibbits of the healthy lungs and sound 
digestion. 

Shall I try to explain to him what an exquisite draughts- 
man Watteau was, or the still more difficult matter that 
this son of a master tiler was the first to practise the de- 
composition of tones, and that he has been called the 
inventor of impressionism, and the link connecting 
Claude and Ruysdael with Turner and Monet ? No, I 
will not attempt the task just now. I will turn to another 
aspect of the effect of Watteau's life. 

A painter paints because he would rather do that than 
anything else. He rarely asks himself why he paints or 
analyses his methods. He has no conscious soul-states. 
He does his work, dies, and his pictures, if they be good, 
live. Then enters the creative critic who reads himself 
into the pictures that he criticises, and explains, often with 
delightful psychological art, the intentions and aspirations 
of the painter. No one was more surprised than Turner 
when he heard of the wonderful things that the imagination 
of Ruskin saw in his pictures. And if Watteau could 
revisit this earth and read all that has been written about 
him he would be dizzy with amazement and vanity. 

The latest sensitive critic is his countryman, M. Camille 
Mauclair, who urges with great eloquence that this charm- 
ing painter of sophisticated pastorals was no " little master," 



76 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

but that underneath the decorative exterior was " a great 
soul " that had been stricken by the " malady of the 
infinite." Well, well ! It was, of course, Walter Pater who 
began this idealisation of Watteau in his " Imaginary 
Portraits." The beautiful writing dates from him. There 
was nothing about the " malady of the infinite " in the 
grudging appreciation of Watteau read by M. le Comte 
de Caylus before the French Academy in 1748, and sound 
sense and live writing marked the essay by the brothers de 
Goncourt. What could be better than this : " Roguish 
prisons of tight-laced bodies, silken baskets for rosy- 
blooming flesh ! Oh ! beribboned scissors of Watteau, what 
a dainty realm of coquetry you cut out of the Maintenon's 
realm of prudery .? " 

How far superior this little master was to his followers. 
Only Fragonard approached him. 

Watteau had really but one motive. In Les Amuse- 
ments Champetres it is beautifully displayed and repeated 
— the statue, the green sward, the gay, indifferent figures, 
the sunlight through the trees, the distance, the sparkling, 
broken colour. And the ironical, elderly dandy looking 
on — all Watteau. A little master, yes ; but an exquisite 
little master. 

Our Mr. Tibbits judges by facts. "My dear sir," he 
will say, " you can't call a man a little master when a 
picture from his brush, 17in. by 21in. sells for 2500 guineas 
at auction in London. No, no ! " 



"THREE PARTS WOMAN" 77 



" THREE PARTS WOMAN— ONE 
PART ARTIST." 
A FTER the death of Kate Greenaway, in the autumn 
of 1901, her friend, Mr. Austin Dobson, wrote a 
little eulogy — six lines — which began : 

" Farewell^ hind heart. And if there he 
In that unshared Immensity 
Child- Angels, they will welcome thee.''"' 

Another line from that same poem lingers in the mind — 
the line that calls her " clean-souled, clear-eyed, unspoiled, 
discreet.*" 

That was Kate Greenaway, the modest, busy maiden lady 
whose destiny it was to live in retirement, and to achieve 
a European reputation by doing slight things, by expressing 
with her pencil beauty as she saw it in the prettiness of 
children — their frolics, their graces, and their squirrel ways. 
She was not a great artist. Kate Greenaway was just her- 
self, succeeding because she trusted to her own vision. 
" She dressed the children of two continents *" might well 
be her epitaph. 

Wise she was, too. She held to what she could do best. 
No vaulting ambition ever rose to topple her into the pit 
of failure. A gentle path-breaker in her chosen hedged 
field of the delineation of child life and child millinery, 
she really hated what she believed to be the ugly in art as 
the 1897 exhibition of the New English Art Club — " such 
productions ! " Of the International Exhibition of 1898 
she wrote to Ruskin : 



78 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

" Some things I liked, but the greater number I felt wrong 
and not clever, and some I felt loathsome." 

Hardy's " Woodlanders "" was spoilt for her by '* coarse- 
ness and unnaturalness," and she found the end " hate- 
ful." 

We like the artist of The Almanacks, The Alphabets, 
and Under the Window none the less for her candour. Of 
course she was narrow ; and she was fearful of the gulfs 
into which stronger and more experimental natures peer ; 
but what there was of her was all fragrant and wholesome, 
and she took no ready-made opinions from others, but 
stood fast and firm on the clear promptings of her own 
individuality. It is amusing to read that Max Nordau 
considered this typical English maiden lady, who loved the 
nursery and laughter, and at the age of fifty had stayed in 
an hotel but twice in her life, a " degenerate " and a 
" decadent." 

The naivete of her letters is delightful. She has been 
reading Mr. Mallock's " New Republic,"" and is much 
troubled because authors are so unlike their books. She 
cannot understand that a man can take various points of 
view about the world in which he lives, the people he 
meets, and himself. Mr. George Moore's work on " Modern 
Painting " made her " cheeks burn." She evades criticism 
of Aubrey Beardsley, and bluntly asks Ruskin what he 
thinks of these " modern drawings." When Mr. Locker 
Lampson told her that " a real new poet," called John 
Davidson, had written a poem called " A Ballad of a 
Nun," she retorts, " Perhaps I shan't think him a poet. 
I like them of the sort : 



"THREE PARTS WOMAN" 79 

* When daisies pied and violets blue. 
And lady smocks all silver-white. . . . ' " 

That preference reveals Kate Greenaway better than 
a whole chapter of analysis. And is there not real huma- 
nity in this cry of a soul three parts woman, and one part 
artist r 

"Sometimes I almost wish I were shut up by myself with 
nothing to do but to paint — only I'm so dependent on 
people's affection. I'm not lonely by myself, but I want 
the people I like very much sometimes." 

Perhaps it is wrong to liken Kate Greenaway to the 
typical English maiden lady. Her mind was too indepen- 
dent to be classed in that category. She loved goodness 
and she hated wickedness, but she was far from being 
orthodox. Cowslips and apple blossoms gave her the 
feeling of trying to remember, as if she had known cowslips 
and apple blossoms in another world ; but she held no 
definite religious opinions. There is plain, sincere speaking 
in one of her letters on this subject : 

" I think Death is the one thing I can't reconcile with a 
God. After such wonderful life, it seems such a miserable 
ending — to go out of life with pain. Why need it be ? ' 

She did not bemuse her mind with fanciful theories. 
Her thought was as practical as her pencil. Life was a 
wonderful and beautiful thing entirely worth living, and 
beyond loomed the horrid enigma. " Why, one tries 
to be good simply because you must — are so unhappy 
if you don't." She could not believe in any of the 



80 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

known religions. Yet hers was a real religion, and a 
beautiful one. More subscribe to it than Kate Greenaway 
guessed. 



THE CHILD IN ART 

TjlNDLESS books are extant containing reproductions of 
sacred pictures showing the child in art ; but how 
seldom is the child natural or well observed, or really like 
a child. One of the most impressive in the long series is 
a Presentation in the Temple^ by Mantegna, who avoided 
the difficulty of indicating the softness, freshness, and rest- 
lessness of the child by swathing him in the bands of linen 
that Italian mothers used and sometimes still use, making 
the infant look like an undersized mummy. 

The old masters were not adepts in the representation of 
children. To them the life likeness of babes was a secon- 
dary motive, like landscape, and the painters were 
usually content with a conventional rendering of the 
Holy Child. 

Even the children painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds and 
Gainsborough, charming though they be, have an air of 
sophistication, as if they had been dressed for the operation, 
and were on their best behaviour. 

The helplessness of a baby, the flower-like complexion of 
a little girl so serious in her play require consummate skill 
and knowledge for their portrayal. 

If a prize were offered for the two best modern pictures 
of child life I know for which I should vote. They are 
easily accessible — no farther away than the Tate Gallery. 



THE CHILD IN ART 81 

One, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, is by Mr. Sargent, the 
other, The Flower Girl, is by Mr. J, J. Shannon. 

Mr. Sargent's picture brings fairyland and fragrant 
beauty into the long room where this radiant spectacle of 
flowers framing childhood hangs. Two little girls, em- 
bowered in lilies, roses, and carnations are lighting Japanese 
lanterns at twilight in preparation for a garden fete. The 
reflections of the candles glow upon their delicate faces, 
flaming above the lanterns, and their pinafores are iri- 
descent with the lights that illuminate that garden of 
flowers. 

Two things are here displayed for our delight — children 
and flowers. The picture makes a beautiful decorative 
pattern. It is far away from realism ; it is a glimpse 
of that fairyland where the life of the true child 
passes. 

In Mr. Shannon's Flower Girl the portals of fairyland 
have not yet been reached by the baby ; her life has still to 
unfold, and it is that very helplessness of infancy that the 
painter has expressed with such charm and naturalness. 
The sun, falling through the leaves of a plane-tree, 
transfigures the cheek and neck of the mother and her 
cotton gown ; the sun, a symbol of the mother's love, 
that will nurse the infant into the individuality of 
childhood. 

Having enjoyed myself with these two pictures of chil- 
dren, I bethought myself of him who has justly been called 
the supreme painter of children — Velasquez. I longed to be 
in Vienna to see again his amazing portraits of the little 
son and daughter of Philip IV., or in Madrid looking 
at his great picture, The Maids of Honour, containing 



82 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

that matchless child portrait, the Princess Margarita 
Maria. 

Suddenly it occurred to me that the portrait of the Prin- 
cess with a portion of the picture copied by John Phillip, a 
marvellous copy, is permanently on view in the Diploma 
Gallery in the right wing of Burlington House. So I 
climbed the dark staircases and saw again the vision of this 
pretty, petulant daughter of Spain, with her attendant 
maid of honour, rouged, but still a child. In the same room 
are other children by Michael Angelo and Leonardo da 
Vinci — priceless possessions. The Michael Angelo is a 
relief in marble of the Mother, Child, and St. John ; 
the Leonardo da Vinci is that haunting cartoon for the 
Louvre picture of the Mother, St. Anne, the Child, and 
St. John. 

I stood there in the fading light, and these children of 
the three masters seemed to have passed from marble, paint, 
and crayon into the sanctuary of eternal youth. 



APRIL 



APRIL 



ITALY UNDER SNOW 

"V/TY last thoughts as I addressed myself to sleep in the 
night train from Paris were : " Day will bring Italy 
and sunshine ; I shall see the almond in blossom, white 
roads, small villages on little hills, the vine, and a blue 
sky." 

But dawn came dim, with flakes of snow, and when we 
reached Modane all the land was white, and the cold pierc- 
ing. Beyond Mount Cenis the snow lay deep, and Turin 
railway station was like a picture of Christmas in England 
in the olden time. The snow had drifted far along the 
platform, the carriage roofs dropped with it, and guards 
and officials, powdered from head to foot, ploughing their 
way though the heaped-up whiteness, talked. How they 
talked ! I wonder the train ever started. And this was 
springtime. The Italian spring ! 

A shepherd, an old wrinkled man, dressed in a suit of 
the cloth that Capuchins wear, entered the compartment, 
and sat shivering, staring only at the white land. The 
water trickled from his cap, dripped along his nose, and, 
I think, down his neck ; but he did not care so long as he 
could sit thawing in the warmth. Well might he thaw ! 
The heat of the carriage was like the tropical house at 
Kew Gardens, and all the windows were shut. I opened 
one an inch, but soon closed it, unable to bear the courteous 

85 



86 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

but piteous reproaches of companions, most unhappy 
Italians, who had mislaid their spring. 

Then I slept, and was awakened by one of them 
plucking my sleeve, and murmuring, "Do you like 
that so ? " He indicated a puddle that had formed in 
my lap from snow-water dripping through the roof of the 
carriage. 

But we were travelling South, outracing winter, and near 
Genoa the snow thinned, ceased, and the rich colour of the 
Ligurian earth, tender greens and glowing russets, revived. 
The sun gleamed out, and there were the almond blossoms, 
the white roads, the goats and oxen, and the lines of blue 
hills beyond. Italy ! 

In Genoa I saw the orange-trees and oleanders in roof- 
gardens above the street of palaces ; marble fa9ades whose 
perfect beauty of proportion weans one from Gothic ; and 
the wide, arcaded thoroughfare with a stupid modern name, 
that United Italy has driven through the corpse of the 
ancient Via Julia, a brilliant, modern commercial road 
that will lead you, if you walk steadily for some days, into 
Rome. 

In Rome, wonder of wonders ! The great bronze doors 
of St. Peter's were thrown wide open, and for once in 
generations we could peer straight through into the dim 
heart of Christendom, where that tremendous declaration 
encircles the dome : " Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram 
aedificabo ecclesiam meam et tibi dabo claves regni cae- 
lorum." 

But Rome was looking not at those vast letters in blue 
mosaic, not at Michael Angelo's haunting Pietd in the 
Capella della Pieta,but at the colossal marble thing, swathed 



ITALY UNDER SHOW 87 

in cloth, the shape of a man, that was being dragged, 
a score of men turning the winch and straining at 
the hawsers, slow inch by slow inch, through the open 
bronze doors. I did not wait to see this statue of St. 
Bartholomew, the latest Papal art acquisition, unswathed 
and hoisted to his alcove in St. Peter's among the 
athletic and flamboyant companion statues by Bernini 
and other mediocre craftsmen, for I was bound for the 
Parthenon of Athens, and could not, would not, wait. 

That night as the train crossed the Campagna, dark and 
wild, the hail rattled against the windows, and all the 
night the rain pattered so that I expected when I stepped 
out in the small hours at Capua to find the land again 
white with snow. No ! Floods only. The guards, hooded 
and top-booted, talked of the brutal weather, groaned, 
and waved their lanterns. 

With dawn came the real Italy. At Trani there was 
sunshine, a butterfly flitting over the blossom, and the 
Adriatic sparkling and blue — yes, blue ! 

All the miles to Brindisi there were glimpses of that 
sunlit ocean, and here I sit by the blue waters of ancient 
Brundisium, the gate of Greece and the East, the town 
where Virgil died, in whose harbour the ships of the 
Crusaders gathered, and the coast end of the Appian Way, 
which drove straight here from Rome, ending only with the 
sea. 

I sit and wait for the steamer Bosnia out of Venice to 
finish loading. At midnight we shall weigh anchor for 
Greece, and at dawn the outlines of Albania will rise from 
the violet sea (I hope it will be violet) ; then Corfu will 
tower up, and when we sight Paxos we shall repeat to one 



88 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

another the old legend that will never be forgotten how on 
the night of the Crucifixion an Egyptian pilot heard a 
voice from Paxos crying, " Pan is Dead ! " And how other 
mariners in these seas also heard that voice moaning, " Pan 
is Dead," and wondered. 



A SPARTAN'S HOME-COMING 

^O still was the Adriatic that we were an hour out of 
Brindisi before I knew that we had started. My 
watch marked one a.m, and, looking through the port- 
hole, I saw the rushing water, gleaming with phospho- 
rescence, and above walls of fog. It was as if we were 
burrowing through the under-world. Shuddering, I re- 
turned to my bunk and slept. At four o'clock the running 
out of the anchor awoke me again, and for an hour we 
rocked, like a derelict, on the outskirts of the Isles of 
Greece, enveloped in a white mist. 

At dawn we moved again, and I went on deck to find 
the vessel feeling her way through a narrow channel close 
to an islet capped by a lighthouse, on one side Albania, 
on the other the northern coast of Corfu. The captain 
had waited because he could not discern the light 
through the fog, and dared not attempt the passage 
without its guidance. The mist still hung about the 
land, and had I been dropped on the deck from an 
airship and asked to name the country, I should have 
hazarded a guess that we were cruising among the islands of 
Scotland. 

With breakfast came the surprise of the day. My 



A SPARTAN'S HOME-COMING 89 

neighbour was an alert youth, with bright beady eyes and 
an indifferent complexion, who addressed me in a strong 
American accent, on the prowess of the modern Greek in 
athletics. So enthusiastic was he about the gymnasium, 
and such trivialities as hurling the hammer and climbing 
the rope, that I asked him if he had entered for the race 
from Marathon to Athens in the Olympic Games. He 
smiled, and said that if the Games were open only to 
Greeks, as in the ninth century b.c, he could have entered, 
even as now. 

" But you are an American ! " said I. 
" I am a Spartan," said he. " I was born in Sparta. I 
went to America when I was twelve, and now, sir, I am 
studying law in Syracuse, New York State." 

My astonishment was such that I nearly dropped my 
cup, for here in the flesh and a ready-made suit was the 
noble youth with the fox lurking in his cloak-folded 
bosom that had been one of the cherished pictures of my 
boyhood. Here was Sparta with an American trunk, and 
an American accent, smoking American cigarettes, master 
of the latest American slang, returning to the city of 
Leonidas. And the chances of travel had made me a 
witness of his home-coming. He wore black kid gloves, 
and a dog-collar. 

At Corfu we went ashore together, and the touch of 
Grecian soil quietened him. He looked dazed, like Ulysses 
when he returned to Ithaca, and he was pathetically 
anxious to be civil to me, and to arouse my enthusiasm 
for Greece. In the end I was hustled into a carriage, and 
he gave the driver a direction which was Greek to my 
understanding. He waved adieu with a coloured hand- 



90 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

kerchief, and we drove, "and drove, and drove, passing 
fantastically-garbed Albanians and a bearded priest of the 
Greek Church riding side-saddle on a mule. Corfu was 
one vast carpet of spring flowers and interminable groves 
of olive-trees, with bare-footed children collecting the 
fallen berries. I saw orange-, lemon-, and fig-trees ; and 
hedges of dusty giant aloes, and always the blue sea, 
ranges of hill, and the cloudless sky of Greece. When we 
returned to the quay, there was the Spartan youth — 
waiting. 

Very silent was the night when we had loaded up with 
our cargo of barrels of olive-oil. The mystery of the 
moment hushed the quick tongue of the twentieth-century 
Spartan, who was returning home. I tried to make him 
talk of Ithaca, which we should pass in the night, but he 
preferred the subject of athletics. So I retired to bed, and 
knew no more until we had silently passed Missolonghi, 
and were anchored off Patras. 

He was still a little nervous in speaking Greek when we 
landed, but he speedily recaptured the way of it, and the 
last I saw of him he was sitting at a cafe table in the 
square at Patras, surrounded by his countrymen, talking 
and gesticulating, happy and confident. 

As the train toiled slowly forward on that marvellous 
journey from Patras to Athens, which is Italy and Switzer- 
land combined, I saw him still, in the mind's eye, making 
that difficult expedition through Arcadia to Sparta. Saw 
his joy mount as the sights, sounds and scents of his birth- 
land encompassed him ; saw America drop from him as a 
garment, and this Spartan youth, with his Syracuse, U.S.A., 
trunk, descend into the famous town that Homer and 



THE GUARDIAN OF THE ACROPOLIS 91 

Thucydides knew, rival and conqueror of Athens, still 
beyond railways, and all its greatness passed away like 
smoke. 

The gods, too, are gone. Pan no longer wanders in 
Arcadia ; but Olympus remains, and the tumbled splendour 
of the Parthenon. 



THE GUARDIAN OF THE ACROPOLIS 

TXE wears a blue military cloak falling to his feet ; a 
peaked cap shades his eyes, and he spends the day, 
from sunrise to sunset, on the most beautiful site in the 
world, watching the most wonderful buildings that have 
ever come from the hand of man. Yet I fancy they are all 
one to his indifference — Parthenon, Erechtheum, the little 
Temple of the Wingless Victory, Propylaea and the broken 
marbles that lie gleaming on the plateau of the Acropolis. 
For he is a modern Greek, and his eyes follow visitors, not 
marbles. 

We soon knew each other well, for in Athens the Acro- 
polis draws one each day like a magnet ; the ruin of the 
Parthenon haunts one increasingly with the perfection of 
ts solemn beauty, and always the guardian is prowHng on 
the plateau. I say I know him well in his blue military 
cloak and peaked hat half hiding his face, and yet for me 
he has no individuality. I see him in the mass, as I see 
the columns of the Parthenon, such as remain from that 
wretched day in 1687, when the Venetian artillerymen 
fired the Turkish powder magazine and blew this white 
wonder sky-high. Strange it is that the Venice of Titian 
should have destroyed the Parthenon of Iktinos and Phidias 



92 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

— brother maiming brother. There are thirty-six columns 
of the Parthenon standing, but I see them as one form, so 
perfectly does each minister to the whole; there are a 
dozen custodians of the Acropolis, but I see them as one 
man — ubiquitous, inquisitive, and prying. Yet it is not 
difficult to avoid him, for a blue cloak shows against white 
marble. When he advances over the broken marbles I hide 
behind a ruin. 

In a corner of the ramparts one may lurk a long morning, 
hidden from his vigilant eye, dreaming of Attica, sur- 
rounded by these mementoes of her greatness. Athens, 
ancient and modern, basking in the plain, lies outstretched 
beneath. From the north door of the Erechtheum, which 
has long stood as model to the world of a classical doorway, 
I see the Sacred Way winding through a pass in the hills 
to Eleusis, whither those Athenians travelled, those happy 
Athenians, to whom the doctrine revealed in the mysteries 
brought the idea of a life beyond the grave. Was not 
Cicero an Initiate, and has he not said that the mysteries 
taught the Athenians not only to live happily but to die 
with a fairer hope ? That slight road, trod by so many feet, 
long, long at rest, still gleams out from the gateway of 
ancient Athens and loses itself in the hills. Beginning at 
the ruins of the Dipylon gate far below, now lost to sight 
amid the white roofs of the modern city, I picture another 
road, lined with sepulchred monuments, that stretched away 
to the grove where Plato taught, and to the home of 
Sophocles. Near yonder line of cypresses is the site of the 
olive-groves of Academe, and there is — 



THE GUARDIAN OF THE ACROPOLIS 93 

" Gleaming Colo?ios, where the nightingale^ 
In cool green covert, warbleth ever clear. "" 

Far below, rising from the base of the Acropolis rock, 
is the theatre of Dionysus, where the masterpieces of 
^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were performed, and 
not very far away, near the modern, marble-seated Stadion 
where the Olympic games are held, I see the bed of the 
river Ilissus, the scene of Plato's " Phasdrus,*" and recreate 
the figures of those Greeks reclining on the turf, listening 
to the song of the cicadas, and feeling the sea breezes. 

" Oh, thou, our Athens, violet-wreathed, brilliant, most 
enviable city ! "^ 

Oh, Athenians, your wisdom reaches us across the cen- 
turies ! We hear your murmured messages, " Know Thy- 
self" — "Nothing in Excess ! "" We who have travelled so 
far, and yet so little, we who still are scaling the heights 
you reached, Athenians, we salute you ! 

Alas ! I have no salutation for the blue-coated guardian 
of modern Greece who watches over the Acropolis. Yet I 
have been grateful to him — twice at least. One hot morn- 
ing, powdered with Athenian dust, and parched with 
climbing the rock of the Acropolis, and the scramble up 
the steep steps of the Propylaea, I found him by that hall 
which Pausanias saw hung with paintings, waiting to offer 
me a glass of sparkling water he had just poured from an 
earthern jar. 

Late in the afternoon a storm of rain descended upon 
the fallen columns and the fragments of the forest of statues 
that now litter the Acropolis plateau. I was running for 
shelter when the custodian waylaid me, directed me to a 



94 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

chamber beneath the Propylasa, and pointed to a cube of 
marble which some slave of Pericles had roughly fashioned. 
We talked in dumb show about the weather, and, peering 
out to see if it had cleared, I looked down upon the rock, 
the Hill of Mars, where St. Paul stood and began, " Ye 

men of Athens " 

In dreams I shall return often to the Acropolis — to the 
lovely northern doorway of the Erechtheum, to that perfect 
little Temple of the Wingless Victory, to broken columns 
whose beauty catches at the throat ; but oftenest I shall be 
gazing at that miracle called the Parthenon, shattered but 
invincible, grown yellow with the iron of ages, very solemn. 
And always among the ruins I shall see those prying, blue- 
coated custodians typical of modern Greece, which at last 
guards the creations of her great craftsmen who made Attica 
glorious when London was a forest swamp. 



A GREEK BOY WHO LAUGHED 
AT THE RAIN 

X SHALL not soon forget Nicolai, the brown Greek boy 
who followed us up the mountain and laughed at the 
rain. The day really belonged to the gallant Thrasybulus 
(b.c. 403), but Nicolai, in his goatskin shoes, tripped in, 
and I have a clearer picture of Nicolai than of Thrasy- 
bulus, in whose fortress, high above Athens, we huddled 
from the snowstorm. 

The fame of Thrasybulus is safe in the history books, 
and Phyle, his fortress, on a spur of the pass that leads 
from Attica to Boeotia, is marked on all the maps. 



A GREEK BOY WHO LAUGHED 95 

Nicolai is unknown, and his deeds are yet to be unrolled ; 
but he coidd find his way to Phyle by the stars, and 
perhaps he has heard of Thrasybulus : how when exiled 
from Athens by the Thirty Tyrants, he made his lair at 
Phyle, gathered comrades, swooped down upon the Piraeus 
and delivered Athens. 

We met Nicolai by chance. At the inn of Chasia, two 
hours below the fortress, he was introduced as a suitable 
vehicle for carrying our luncheon, including the magnum 
of resinous wine, which I would sooner go tongue-dry than 
drink. He wore a sheepskin coat and goatskin shoes ; he 
was brown as a nut ; his teeth glistened like Parian marble ; 
there was always a smile in his quick eyes ; he was about 
the height of a Newfoundland dog, and his small feet 
tripped over the rocks like a chamois. 

The walls of the fortress still stand crumbling, and the 
view that Thrasybulus looked upon more, than 2000 years 
ago, met our eyes for a brief half-hour of glorious sun- 
shine. There was Athens far below shrinking in the Attic 
plain, ^Egina rising from her blue waters, the coast-line 
of the Peloponnesus, great Hymettus sloping to the sea, 
and encompassing us the peaks and ravines of the wild 
pass that leads into Boeotia. We munched our luncheon 
and some of us sipped the wry Greek wine, while Nicolai, 
sitting apart on a stone, nursing his goatskin-clad feet, 
watched us with a smile dancing in his brown eyes. 
Repeatedly we begged him to share our meal; but he 
would eat nothing save a crust of dry bread. It was Lent. 
He was fasting. This small, hungry Greek boy encoun- 
tered his renunciation with a smile. 

Then the snow-storm swooped upon the stronghold of 



96 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

Thrasybulus, ^Egina merged into the grey sea, all Attica 
was blotted out, and Hymettus vanished in the whirling 
flakes. We huddled under the fortress wall those who 
could, finished the resinous wine ; but Nicolai would not 
drink. When we started forth to descend, bending before 
the storm, stumbling, staggering, he capered over the 
rocks, always a little way in advance, his sheepskin coat 
unbuttoned, and only a thin vest between the elements and 
his brown skin. The snow turned to rain, and by the 
time we reached the isolated monastery called " Our Lady 
of the Defile," we looked and felt like scarecrows. The 
monks piled high the wood fire in the guest chamber, and 
served us with coffee and the liquor called masticha ; but 
Nicolai would not partake. He stood in the doorway, far 
from the fire, smiling. Once he laughed outright. I was 
seated upon a couch supported by what I imagined to be a 
heap of skins. Suddenly they moved, and a corpulent, 
black- bearded monk slowly rose from beneath me, rubbed 
his sleep-dazed eyes, and stared around. Then he placed 
his hands dolefully upon his stomach, sighed, and asked a 
question, of which the interpretation was : " I am ill. Is 
there a doctor here ? " I offered him a cigarette, and 
when I added a quinine tabloid he sighed again, and said : 
"You place a burden of gratitude upon my shoulders, 
which all the years of my life will be too short to remove." 
When, warmed and tolerably dry, we passed to the little 
chapel to drop our thank-offering into the treasury be- 
neath a picture of the Virgin encased in a metal-plaited 
robe, Nicolai knelt. There is no trouble about an Education 
Bill in this country. The Greek peasant child takes to 
religion as naturally as the English child to tops. 



A GREEK BOY WHO LAUGHED 97 

It rained steadily throughout the rough descent to the 
inn at Chasia. The water trickled into my boots until it 
seemed as if I were dragging armour along with me ; but 
Nicolai had no trouble with his goatskin shoes. He still 
smiled ; but he looked like a water-rat. At the inn the 
peasants, gathered around the charcoal pan, made way for 
us. We drank more coffee and masticha, and again dried 
our surfaces. Some one said, " Won"'t Nicolai come to the 
fire ? " He was asked, but shook his head and smiled. So 
he was given his small fee and told to speed home and dry 
himself. He seized the hand that gave the money, kissed 
it, pressed the fingers to his forehead, threw an embracive 
smile round the room, bobbed his head, and ran through 
the door as if he were a rabbit making for its burrow. 

The last stage of the walk to Ano Liosia, whence we 
would take train for Athens, was a little lonely without 
Nicolai. I missed his small brown figure pattering about 
like a companionable dog. 

At the station we were told the train was due in a 
quarter of an hour. Forgetting that the Greek locomo- 
tives arrive early or late as the whim takes them, I 
squelched into the waiting-room, cast off" my boots, 
removed my stockings and wrung them out. An official 
was contemplating the large puddle I had made on the 
floor when the train entered the station. 

I caught it ; but I missed Nicolai's laughter — brown 
Nicolai of the hills in the rain, with his conscience and his 
goatskin shoes, who has quite eclipsed Thrasybulus. 



98 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 



DAWN AT NAUPLIA 

X HAD seen Mycenae, the most ancient city of Greece; 
had passed under the Gate of Lions ; had climbed the 
rugged height ; and, standing among ruins, had looked 
dovm on the valley where Agamemnon held sway before the 
dawn of history. 

The Christian era found Mycenae desolate. Desolate it 
still is, save when travellers stay an hour in this mountain 
recess on their way from Corinth to Nauplia. All is gone 
but the vast Royal tombs, defying time, and the poor rem- 
nants of palace and city, "abounding in gold," which 
under Agamemnon ruled the Greeks of the mainland 
and the islands. I stood among the rubbish thrown up 
by the excavators. Empty and open to the day are the 
tombs. Gone are the treasures of gold and silver found 
by Dr. Schliemann in 1877. Athens holds them now. 

Desolation broods. Yesterday the sign of life was a 
raven circling above the ruins ; the sound that lingered in 
my ears was the hum of bees droning in the enormous bee- 
hive tomb of Agamemnon. Buried in the hillside for 
thousands of years, it is now open to the light of the 
twentieth century, and the bees, flying under the lintel^ 
which weighs 113 tons, have made this beehive tomb, 50ft. 
high, their playground. 

Leaving Mycenae, I descended to Nauplia, and all through 
the night in dreams I heard the buzzing of those bees dron- 
ing the death-dirge of Agamemnon. A time came when 
that monotonous dirge broke into a cry of triumph, as if a 
trumpet had heralded an awakening from sleep. I rose to 



DAWN AT NAUPLIA 99 

find dawn spreading into the room ; and to see, from the 
window, soldiers patrolling the streets of Nauplia playing 
the Festival March. I remembered the signification of 
the day. It was the anniversary of Greek Independence, 
and this Festival March greeted the dawn in honour of the 
new kingdom of Hellas, seventy-six years old. It hushed 
the dirge of Agamemnon. 

Round Nauplia at dawn the soldiers marched playing 
that cheerful air. Then silence fell, Nauplia slumbered 
again. I, too. Once more I heard the drone of the bees, 
and with the recurrence of that dirge I saw, with closed 
eyes, that strange scene that I had witnessed more than 
once in Greece — the carrying of the dead through the 
streets, richly clothed, flower-garlanded, with uncovered 
faces, to their resting-place, while the mourners chant the 
ancient hymn, as they offer the last caress. 

" Seeing me speechless and breathless, oh ! weep over me, 
all my brothers, friends, kindred, and acquaintance ; for 
yesterday I was speaking to you. Give me the last embrace, 
for I shall not walk or speak with you again." 

But such solemn thoughts did not long endure ; for again 
that Festival March broke cheerfully over the sleeping 
town ; again I started from my bed, and, leaning to the 
window, heard the soldiers repeat their greeting to the 
dawn. Again and again that paean of joy roused the 
citizens. Between the serenades we tried to sleep, for it 
was early to be astir. 

I had no more dreams of the uncovered faces of the dead. 
The gaiety of that march tiu*ned my thoughts into a 
livelier channel, and into a brief dream came a different 



100 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

fragment of music — the sound of a shepherd playing his 
pipes on the walls of the citadel of Corinth. From new 
Corinth we had driven out to the old city, had climbed to 
the summit of Acro-Corinth on a day when sky and sea 
were blue and still, and all that classic land was bathed in 
sunshine. The panorama from the summit was famous 
before Caesar refounded the Corinth that St. Paul knew and 
reproved. Think of the eyes that have looked upon the 
view we saw that brilliant day — Parnassus, snow-clad, 
across the gulf; Salamis, ^gina and little islands floating 
on the fairy water ; Athens and the Parthenon in the dis- 
tance, and above them the sheen of the marble that Phidias 
quarried, gleaming from the slopes of Pentelicus. And 
while we looked, speechless, at the beauty, a shepherd on 
the crumbling walls of the citadel, his legs dangling over 
Corinth, played upon his pipes, and the melody rose faintly 
to us through the hot air. 

It was the music of his pipes I heard while dreaming 
through that restless dawn in Nauplia, perhaps the self- 
same tune that Pan played in Arcadia ; and I should have 
continued to hear, I think, that soothing air in dreams, for 
mind and body were still weary, had not that Festival 
March, the town band now augmenting the military 
enthusiasts, again broken out over annoyed Nauplia. 

So putting Agamemnon and the bees, the shepherd and 
his pipes away, for the day clearly belonged to George I. 
King of the Hellenes, I rose and threw wide the window. 
The sun had risen. The town was abroad. Flags waved. 
Modern Greece was beginning to rejoice. 

I went out into the street, and was at once surrounded 
by a bevy of boot-blacks clamouring for employment. 



Last glimpses op Greece loi 

They follow you like men at midnight in Chancery Lane 
with bird-seed for sale. Boot-blacking is the most popular 
peripatetic occupation in modern Greece. 

Customs have changed since Socrates and Phaedrus walked 
along the bed of the Ilissus, and cooled their bare feet in 
the running water. Views have changed since shoeless 
Socrates, addressing Beloved Pan by the Ilissus stream, be- 
sought the god to give him beauty in the inward soul. 
But dawn at Nauplia — in silence — does not change. 



LAST GLIMPSES OF GREECE 

rriHE night was still, the stars clear, and the water in the 
harbour of Patras was unruffled. I stood upon the 
bridge of the steamer, seeing sadly the last of Greece. 
Seaward was Missolonghi, which we should pass in the 
dark. Landward were the lights of Patras, reflected in 
the water. The shadowy figures of Greeks moved upon 
the shore. All was over. I had seen Greece. 

It was the moment for reflection. The world was silent. 
Even the vessel was quiet. The cargo was aboard, the 
crew resting, the captain frowning from the bridge at the 
boat that had just pushed ofl" from the quay with a 
dilatory passenger. In those still moments episodes of 
my days in Greece rose before me, and I wondered which 
was the dominant impression. 

Was it the first glimpse of Olympia which I had seen 
that morning "^ No town, no shops ; j ust a few cottages 
straggling along a white road, an inn upon a hill, and a 
museum which contains, in a secluded room, that white 



102 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

wonder of chiselling — the Hermes of Praxiteles — cold and 
virgin as the untrodden snow upon Parnassus. I stood 
upon the hill above Olympia soon after dawn, and looked 
down over the sacred precincts whither for over a thousand 
years the steps of the Hellenic world reverently turned ; 
where Plato was honoured ; where the ambition of the 
young Thucydides was fired by hearing Herodotus read his 
works aloud ; where the olive-wreath was bestowed upon 
the victor in the games. All I saw was a waste of brown 
ruins in the plain, low-lying, hardly discernible, the refuse 
cast up by the excavators, a gorge, a bridge, and the 
waters of the Alpheus and Kladeos still guarding, and 
occasionally submerging, these recovered symbols of the 
piety and glory of Greece. Also spring flowers, and the 
young green of many trees. 

I descended to the plain, sought the Stadium, found it 
not, because much still lies buried, and then suddenly, at 
the foot of the Kronos Hill, touched a rough direction- 
board pointing to a stony upland path, and on it was 
written " Route to Arcadia." Was the meniory of three 
words on a rough notice-board the dominant impression ? 

Or was it the sea-line of Marathon seen from the summit 
of Pentelicus — an Italian landscape, sunshine and azure, 
in a land of marble — such a landscape as Titian would 
have flashed into the background of some grim altar- 
piece ? It was a day of terrific wind, clouds of dust, and 
glare. With difficulty we had climbed the mountain still 
scarred with the quarries from which Phidias dug the 
Parthenon marble ; we had been blown off our feet by the 
wind ; we had crawled to the shelter of an overhanging 
rock, and, peeping over the edge, had seen, miles away, 



LAST GLIMPSES OF GREECE 103 

far, far below, beyond the wind, unmoved by it, the curve 
of the bay, blonde against an azure sea. So we looked on 
Marathon, a blue, sickle-shaped curve, against a desolate 
shore — Marathon in peace. 

Or was it the idea of Delphi that shadowed us, when we 
embarked at Corinth, and sailed across the gulf through 
the night, to awake in the harbour of Itea, to walk through 
the vast olive-grove, and upward, every step of toil draw- 
ing nearer to Parnassus, and to all that remains of Delphi, 
laid bare on the slopes of mighty cliffs ? Was it the first 
draught, that parched noon, of water from the Castalian 
Fountain, beneath the plane-trees, by the Sacred Way ? 

Or was it the sight of the Acropolis of Athens, as we 
drove one day from the Piraeus through the tedious, dirty, 
dust-laden suburbs, sign-marks of New Greece, strangely 
content with these shanties straggling over her classic soil ? 
Always before us rose the Acropolis, eternally beautiful, 
purple against pink Hymettus, the columns of the Parthe- 
non glowing golden in the rays of the setting sun. We 
picked our way through a camp of gypsies, brown as the 
earth, and, winding upward, passed through the Pro- 
pylaea, and stood for the last time on that marble-strewn 
plateau. The long shadows were blue, the Parthenon was 
gold, and turning, we saw through the gate of the Propylaea 
the sun, an orb of fire, sinking to Eleusis. We stood in a 
vapour of light. The marble had taken on life. It seemed 
as if the Parthenon had awakened from the sleep of cen- 
turies, and was prodigally scattering her stored sunshine. 
That was a moment of wonder, ineffable, ending when the 
voices of the custodians cried, " Closing ! Closed ! " 

We descended the marble steps of the Propylaea. The 



104 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

gate clanged behind us ; but the light remained. The 
Odeion of Herodes Atticus, that vast music-hall open to 
the sky, seemed to be peopled with shades of light. The 
marble seats of the theatre of Dionysus shone, and when I 
stooped to feel the carvings on the chair of the High 
Priest, I thought, in that magic hour, that the beauty of 
the crouching figures in low relief had never been excelled. 

Suddenly the colour left the marble. The sun had 
dipped behind the hills, and looking up, I saw that dead 
thing, the Parthenon, all the glory gone from it, grey and 
cold. 

But next morning, when I left Athens, it lived again. 
The first beams of the sun vivified the marble, and the 
columns stood proudly out — the glory of Hellas. Yes ; 
the Parthenon is the ineffaceable impression of Greece — 
maimed, but immortal. 



The late passenger came aboard. We steamed slowly 
out into the darkness. The lights of Patras dwindled, 
disappeared. Slowly we moved through the silent sea 
towards Ithaca — and home. 



MAY 



MAY 



BEDSIDE READING 

/CHEERILY the doctor entered the room. Has a 
patient ever been deceived by that unnatural 
cheeriness ? 

He laid a towel across my bare back and placed his ear 
against it. " Say ninety-nine ! Again ! Again ! Again ! 
Take a deep breath ! Another ! Another ! Say one, two ! 
Again!" 

The silent operation of temperature-taking followed. 
" You must go to bed at once,"" said the doctor. 

Such was the beginning of it. 

That night, feeling amazingly unwell, I reached out for my 
private thermometer, which, with a glass of milk and an 
uneatable health biscuit, stood by the bedside. An exami- 
nation of the thermometer by the light of a flickering 
candle showed a rise in temperature. I tried to sleep, but 
my eyeballs seemed to be on fire : the lids burnt when I 
attempted to close them. Straight and still I remained, 
with eyes wide open, breathing uneasily, emitting sounds 
from my lungs not unlike an automobile trying to start, all 
the while staring at the bobbing and jumping reflections 
that the dying fire cast on the ceiling. 

" How strange if I were to die," I said to myself. " I 
never thought it possible." But, oddly, the idea of dying 
did not trouble me. AVliy should it ? The sensation of 

107 



108 THE i)IARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

lying there in bed was so extraordinarily comforting. I 
would not have exchanged that delicious feeling of being at 
last in the right place, at the right moment, for anything 
the world had to offer. "This is the heart's desire," I 
thought. 

About the hour when the hall porters of the clubs lock 
the doors on the last members I again took my temperature. 
It seemed to be a point higher. I fell back upon the pillow 
without extinguishing the candle. There was now only one 
pattern on the ceiling from the dying fire. The house was 
very still. I had no pain ; indeed, I was extraordinarily 
content with my lot. I tried to frame a sentence or two 
describing my sensations. The words composed themselves 
without effort — thus : 

" Immortal longings ? No ! It is, as I have long sus- 
pected, that Death is simply a wise and kind old Nurse, who 
has had so many children under her care that she knows 
exactly what to do. My case is quite ordinary. Nurse is 
performing her duties most satisfactorily. I recommend 
her." 

Then I closed my eyes, and the fire on the eyeballs did 
not hurt. 



Some days later I described all this to the real nurse 
while she was painting my back with iodine. She told me 
not to be silly, and that it was greedy to eat a pound of 
grapes in one afternoon. That evening — it was a Saturday 
— I felt much better, and was aware of some curiosity to 
know what had been happening in the world. Nurse volun- 
teered to go out and buy an evening paper. When she 



BEDSIDE READING 109 

returned with a rustling sheet, she said, "Now, you lie quite 
still, and FU read you out all the news, beginning with the 
headlines. 

" ' Arsenal score twice in the first half against the 
Blades—'" 

" Read the news, please, nurse, on page 3,"" I said. 

" This is page 3. I'll begin at the top of another 
column, if you like. * Brentford play pluckily with a ragged 
team against the Spurs.' Is that more interesting ? " 

I passed my hand anxiously over my brow. " There's 
something wrong either with me or the paper," I said. 
" Please turn to page 1 and read the leading article." 

Not very graciously nurse began : " I raised the necessary 
bob last Saturday and hied me to Tottenham. I have read 
very many accounts of the game. A goodly number award 
the glory to the Geordies, to McCombe, Andy Aitken, and 
other Novocastrian notabilities " 

" I do not think that can be the leading article," said I. 
" Be so good as to try the leaderette notes." 

The amiable nurse at once began to read, in a clear, high 
voice : " My old friend, Mr. E. W. Nuttall, sends me a line 
that it is too long since we have seen each other's face, and 
asks me to the Wasps' smoker." 

« Thank you. That will do." Then (to myself) : « My 
brain is affected. I am going mad ! " 

Next morning the doctor made an early call. " Say 
ninety-nine ! Again ! Breathe deeply ! Say one, two ! 
Once more ! You're going on beautifully. You may get 

up for an hour on . Is that the Football Star ? Many 

thanks." 



110 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

"Wolves 4, Notts County 3," murmured the doctor. 

" How disappointing ! Why, Notts County . Let me 

see the tongue. No, not chops. A little white meat and 
a rice pudding. Why Notts County " 



THE APPARITION 

rpA^'ICE during that long luncheon at the Brighton 
Hotel had the Apparition passed along the sea- 
front, and each time I nearly asked the waiter who and 
what he might be. But I refrained. 

Far out at sea a sun-ray pierced through the clouds, and, 
falling on the wave, illumined it, giving to that spot in 
the grey ocean a brief loveliness, the pure beauty of water 
moving in light. It drew my eyes, drew all of me, so 
that it was as in a dream that I heard the waiter say, 
cajolingly, " Hab a nice slice of cold meat, sare .? No?^^ 
He was distressed to think I had eaten only three of 
the seven courses, and he had learnt, I suppose, that an 
Englishman will eat cold beef even when he seems 
unhappy. 

I waved him away, and again sought that splash of 
jewel-like light in the grey ocean (we all have our weak- 
nesses), and as I looked there rose above it the vision that 
had been subconsciously with me all the day — the head of 
Nelson and those gyrating letters of the alphabet. It 
sounds commonplace, does it not ? It was the Grail 
that ought to have risen from the mystic wave : but 
listen. 

It was at a cinematograph entertainment in the pavilion 



THE APPARITION 111 

at the pier- head. The rest of the programme I forget, but 
Nelson and those amazing letters remain. The darkened 
hall was filled with children and women ; but even amid 
the chatter and upholstery, the winter millinery, and the 
marine circulating library novels, one had the feeling that 
outside, all around, was the sea ; so when the small, grey 
head of Nelson moved upwards over the screen it seemed 
right that he should thus rise from his element to the 
strains of a hornpipe played by a piano and a cornet. No 
sooner was Nelson settled upon the screen than there began 
to push their way over the edges detached letters of the 
alphabet, sideways and upside down, twisting and turning, 
edging one another out of place, gyrating round the head 
of Nelson. 

The audience began to titter ; to laugh ; they supposed 
that the apparatus was misbehaving ; but even while they 
were laughing, a co-ordinating impulse, an influence, voice- 
less but ubiquitous, such as bees feel when they swarm, 
seemed to direct those whirling letters of the alphabet : 
they slipped towards their appointed places ; one stood 
firm, then another, then a third ; suddenly all had fallen 
into order, and the words stood motionless, haloed around 
the brow of Nelson : " England expects that every man will 
do his duty." 

Silence fell. Not often at a casual entertainment does 
the vision of the perfected whole follow so quickly the 
riddle of the apparently purposeless parts. 



All I saw from the hotel window during luncheon was in 
part, and so long as the gleam of light OR the sea lasted 



112 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

it seemed possible that some of the letters of the world 
might shape themselves into a meaning, perfectly clear, 
shiningly fair. 

Even that Apparition who was now passing, for the third 
time, along the sea-front ! He had flowing hair falling 
upon his shoulders ; he was clad in a long garment of 
camel's hair ; on his feet were sandals ; in his hand he 
carried a staff that towered above his head ; and he never 
passed a child without a smile and a wave of the hand. 

A half- turn of my head, and the waiter was at my elbow. 
He understood. It was not the first time the question had 
been addressed to him. 

" Afou, a crank ! He wants everybody not to eat meat, 
and to drink nothing. He sells a little book about it. He 
eats nuts. " The waiter glanced towards the Boar's Head 
and the Partridge Pie on the sideboard. He seemed to be 
really amused. 

I went out, overtook the Apparition, talked to him, and 
wondered. Could it be that he, one of the alien letters, 
had found his rightful place, and was now waiting till 
others should feel their centre and group themselves in 
obedience to the immortal scheme ? Absurd ! Yet he 
went his happy way, singing, and talking to the children. 
Over-clothed, over-fed folk, care-lined in the pursuit of 
excitement, looked at him, smiled, and passed on. Yet it 
was he the sky seemed to arch over — not they. Again, 
how absurd. 

He sold me his book for a shilling, and told me his 
heart's desire : to save enough money to be able to 
gather around him a small class of children, who would be 
his disciples, and carry on his work. "' The world needs 



THE NIGHTINGALE US 

healing," he said. " I am here to heal. If the Great 
Healer, the Lord Jesus, were living on earth to-day, He 
would live as I do ! Yes ! " 

He smiled, and passed on cheerfully, the happiest man 
on the parade, throwing kisses to the children, drawing in 
vast inhalations of air, nourished by nuts and heavenly 
manna. 

The spot of light again fell on the ocean. Did I really 
see his letter settling in its place, while our letters were 
dizzying round ? I do not know. Sometimes nothing is 
hidden. 



THE NIGHTINGALE 

"TTIT^HEN, at one a.m., I tried to compose myself to sleep 
it was not the song of the nightingale that hindered, 
but that question of my bibulous host as he handed me a 
candle: "J 'ever hear a thrush singing in the rain.?" 
The landlord spoke as if that sound o'ertopped the night- 
ingale's song and all else in the world. His fuddled brain 
clung to it, as a man clutches at his hat in a gale of wind. 
Why not ? It is essential poetry, that simple sentence of 
six words — " A thrush singing in the rain." 

But it had been a night of nightingale song and talk, 
and this persistent thrush singing in the rain was an in- 
terloper. The nightingale causerie had begun at sundown 
beneath a gorse bush by the Sussex sea, and the participa- 
tors were Papa, Mama, the Child, myself and some 
Others. We were seated on rugs on a green place by the 

H 



114 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

sea, shivering and sneezing, pretending that summer began 
in May. 

Papa opened the causerie by remarking that the birds 
had amved on the Sussex coast that day. 

The Child dropped her doll's cradle to listen. Papa 
restated the miracle, ever new, ever wonderful, that the 
nightingale and its companions find their way to England 
from North Africa and Asia Minor ; that the male night- 
ingales precede the females ; that the little brown bird 
with the rusty-red tail only alights in certain parts of 
east and south-east England; that it disowns Scotland. 
" Some people say," added Papa, " that this is a sign of 
the Creator's dislike of the Wee Kirk." 

After supper, when the Child had been put to bed, we 
walk edinland, stealthily, and heard the nightingale. It 
is the most silent moment in the lives of most. Even 
motor-cars have been known to stop when the nightingale 
is singing. 

Returning to the cottage by the sea each told where, and 
when, and with what depth of emotion he had first heard 
the nightingale. O, but there were sumptuous confidences 
in the jewelled night, with Orion walking high, and Dunge- 
ness light flashing from immensity. One of the company 
had heard the nightingale first at Oxford, an orchestra of 
melody, lusty, abundant, pervading as youth itself ; another 
had retired to bed hopeless of hearing the nightingale, and 
had awakened to a night alive and pulsating with liquid 
notes ; another had heard mate calling to potential mate 
one magical midnight in the weald of Kent ; another (that, 
of course, was myself) had taken a second-class return 
ticket from King's-cross to Finchley-road Station, had 



THE NIGHTINGALE 115 

inquired of a rural policeman the way to Hampstead, and 
in a damp wood which I believed to be the wood where 
Keats had heard the nightingale, had heard a sound which 
I believed proceeded from a nightingale. Anyhow, it was 
not a corncrake. 

^' Darkling I listen 

Thou wast not horn for death, immortal Bird."" 

Another, a Cheshire man, spoke thus : — I must have 
been a boy of about nine years of age when one evening 
at the end of dinner the butler came hurriedly into the 
room and whispered to father. *' Impossible ! " said father. 
" Roger have heard it hisself, sir," said the butler. We 
all rushed out, and there, sure enough, in a sallow by 
Wankyn's pond was a nightingale singing. The whole 
village was present, and father talked about putting a 
plate on the willow. There was as much excitement as 
when the butcher's shop caught fire. Hush . . . ! 



The song began again — 

" The same that ofttimes hath 
CharrrCd magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, infaeri/ lands forlorn.'''' 

At eleven o'clock I left Papa, Mama, the Child and 
the Others and prepared to step out on the four-mile tramp 
to the Sussex inn near Hastings, where I was passing my 
villeggiatura. Some enjoy a midnight walk through a 
desolate country, the impalpable night, ominous, mysterious 
all around, cottage windows dark, lanes with banks so high 



116 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

that the stars are nearly hidden, furry things darting across 
the road, the long drawn-out wail of a dog winding from 
some remote farmhouse, the moan of the wind in trees, and 
that torture of the imaginative wayfarer, the sound of foot- 
steps somewhere behind, that stop when you stop, and 
patter again on the silent road when you step breathlessly 
forward. Amid these foolish fears, four times as I walked 
an unseen nightingale sang : — 

** Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 
Through the sad heart of Ruth " 

The inn was dark when I reached it. I rang, a light 
moved behind the glass inner door, and the landlord, smil- 
ing the smile of the sleepy sot, admitted me. 

" I've walked from Chickbody-on-Marsh," said I proudly, 
" and IVe heard the nightingale four times.*" 

The fuddled man stared. Then a smile of remembrance 
broke over his face and he said slowly : " J'ever hear a 
thrush singing in the rain ? " 



TWO R.A. PRESIDENTS 
I. REYNOLDS 

X DOUBT if the modern art student derives much 
from Sir Joshua Reynolds'" " Discourses " except 
encouragement towards noble living and thinking. Sir 
Joshua is always on the side of the angels ; but the student 
wants experiences, views gained from work, practical advice, 
not theories — such a book as William Hunt's " Notes." 
Little enough, I imagine, Charles Furse gained from Sir 



TWO R.A. PRESIDENTS 117 

Joshua Reynolds' Discourses. His debt to Sir Joshua's 
pictures was enormous. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood 
did not revolt against Reynolds* portraits, but against the 
pictures that were produced in succeeding generations by 
men who weakly or lazily followed his advice, and founded 
what they termed their style on the work of man, instead 
of Nature. 

Whenever Reynolds came Tace to face with a fine Vero- 
nese, Tintoretto, or Rubens, all his theories about the 
grand style of the Bolognese evaporated in the heat of his 
enthusiasm. When he confronted life, as in his superb 
Lord Heathjield or his bewitching Nelly O'Brien, or in 
that picture of profound sensibility called Portraits of Two 
Gentlemen at the National Gallery, or in a score of beauti- 
ful things, his theories about the grand style scattered 
before the revelation of his eyes that God, not one of the 
Caracci, had given him. Sometimes, in a happy hour, he 
fused the two, as in The Graces Decorating a Terminal 
Figure of Hymen; but if I want to know the real Sir 
Joshua, I go to the pictures mentioned above, and to 
Lady Betty Foster, at Chatsworth, and Captain Orme, on 
the staircase of the National Gallery. I do not seek The 
Death of Dido, at Buckingham Palace, or A Mother and 
her Sick Child, at Dulwich. What a picture ! What a 
warning against theoretical painting ! 

A student turning to the Twelfth Discourse, and reading 
this passage : " I again repeat, you are never to lose sight 
of Nature,"" might be disposed to convict Sir Joshua of 
inconsistency ; but a few lines further down he will dis- 
cover that " the art of seeing Nature " is defined as " the 
art of using models." It was when he arranged his models 



118 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

after the Grand Manner that Sir Joshua"'s compositions 
became artificial ; it was when his painter's eye saw them 
as they were in some brilliant or personal moment, as in 
Nelly O'Brien and the Countess of Albemarle^ that they 
became alive. The Age of Innocence was arranged, and 
the child will always remain — arranged. 

Nowhere does the nobility of Sir Joshua Reynolds' 
character stand forth in ampler outlines than in the 
Fourteenth Discourse, wherein he discusses the genius of 
his brilliant rival, lately dead. How strangely the opening 
words of the second paragraph read to day : 

'*We have lately lost Mr. Gainsborough, one of the 
greatest ornaments of our Academy." 

Consider the conditions. Here was a brilliant, wilful, 
fantastic man of genius — musician as well as painter — 
who had quarrelled with the Academy, and whose mer- 
curial, sprite-like character must have been antipathetic 
to, and unrealisable by, the grave and consistent Sir 
Joshua : — 

" I cannot prevail on myself to suppress that I was not 
connected with him by any habits of familiarity."" 

But Reynolds had the memory of that death-bed meet- 
ing in his wise, sad head, and the name and praise of 
Gainsborough run like the melody of a spring song 
through the Discourse. We can imagine the mild dis- 
approval in Sir Joshua's eyes when he regretted that Mr. 
Gainsborough did not venerate the works of the great 
historical painters of former ages, and when he apologised 
for Gainsborough's want of precision and handling. To 



TWO R.A. PRESIDENTS 119 

Reynolds the mercurial Gainsborough must have 
appeared as a brilliant and wilful woman to a serious, con- 
vention-bound man, fascinating and alluring him in spite 
of his disapproval. Yet how fair and fine to Gainsborough 
he is. 

As I read on to the end of the Discourses I have but one 
feeling for the old President — a deep and increasing 
reverent affection. He was so simple-minded, so great, so 
serious, so overflowing in his love for what is noble and of 
good report. We read the account of how he ceased 
painting with the thrill of awe and gladness that we 
experience when the little things of life suddenly take 
greatness to themselves. 

"While finishing a portrait of the Marchioness of 
Hertford, he felt a sudden decay of sight in the left eye. 
He laid down the pencil, sat a little while in mute con- 
sideration, and never lifted it more."" 

A year later he delivered his last Discourse. Through- 
out it, the name of Michael Angelo appears again and 
again, as if he is reporting the visits of some god to the 
scenes of his former labours. The last passage is Reynolds' 
final communication to the world in which he played so 
great a part, which he so enriched by his example, as well 
as by his works. The sentences roll forward like a tide 
that, moving, seems asleep : — 

" Were I now to begin the world again, I would tread 
in the steps of that great master : to kiss the hem of his 
garment, to catch the slightest of his perfections, would be 
glory and distinction enough for an ambitious man. I 
feel a self-congratulation in knowing myself capable of 



120 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

such a sensation as he intended to excite. I reflect, not 
without vanity, that these Discourses bear testimony of my 
admiration of that truly divine man ; and I should desire 
that the last words which I should pronounce in this 
Academy, and from this place, might be the name of — 
Michael Angelo." 



II. LORD LEIGHTON 

When we recall Leighton it is the splendour of the name 
not the performance of the artist, that passes dazzlingly 
across the vision. In him the personality of the individual 
dominated and out-soared the artist. 

For years he was the most distinguished figure of the 
art worlds of England and Europe. Under his president- 
ship of the Royal Academy art, for better or worse, be- 
came fashionable, with paragraphs in the society journals. 
Illustrations of the costly houses of painters became as 
popular with the magazine public as pictures of the Stately 
Homes of England. Those golden years are gone. The 
painter is no longer a personage with the income of an 
ambassador ; often he opens a school, and is pleased and 
proud if, at the end of the year, he can pay his bills. 

In a letter to his father, dated 1861, Leighton wrote : 

" As for Ruskin, he was in one of his queer moods when 
he came to breakfast with me — he spent his time looking 
at my portfolio, and praised my drawings most lavishly — 
he did not even look at the pictures." 

There was something more in that " queer mood " of 
Ruskin than meets the eye. Perhaps one of the secret 



TWO R.A. PRESIDENTS 121 

troubles of some of Leighton's many friends was that they 
could not praise his pictures as much as they desired to do. 
Happy, unhappy Leighton ! 

Yet his first studies for pictures were rich and prodigal. 
Compare the delightful and impulsive lyrical statements in 
colour for Captive Andromache, for The Return of Perse- 
phone, for the Bacchante, with the cold and formal classicism 
of the finished pictures. One never detects this fatigue, 
this inability to vivify, this partiality for pose and lack of 
the vital gesture, in his sculpture. In modelling his tem- 
perament probably found its highest expression, and in 
such sculpturesque designs as his magnificent Elisha raising 
the Son of the Shunamite. 

I think Leighton knew this. It was what endeared him 
to friends and acquaintances. 

How timid he was when he faced the " happy accident " 
that more painters would welcome as the something, not 
themselves, that flashes genius into their humdrum labours. 
Had he had the power he would never have dared to write 
that wonderful, subtle, uncouth, rough-hewn, and tender 
story that Mr. Kipling calls " Wireless." 

It is the man, not the artist, who dominated the art 
world when he was alive. And within the man there were 
two men, the President of the Royal Academy, and the 
Fred who wrote long letters to Papa, and who visited him 
every Sunday afternoon when the clock struck five. 

The first time I met Leighton I saw the two men — the 
President and Fred — within an hour. I had been invited 
to his house on a Sunday afternoon, the day he received : 
I passed through the cold splendour of the Arab Hall, 
ascended the Peacock staircase, and so to the studio, where 



122 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

he stood, a magnificent and lonely decorative man, velvet- 
coated, scented, his grey curls nestling on his brow, receiv- 
ing guests of all nationalities, conversing mellifluously and 
with perfect ease in any tongue and on any topic. There 
was the President, urbane, cultured, detached, doing his 
utmost because he was the official representative of the 
Royal Academy that he loved. When the last guest had 
gone he threw himself into a chair and talked. Then I 
knew Fred who wrote long letters to Papa. 

How superior and remote from actual life in their 
honeyed eloquence were his lectures to the students of the 
Royal Academy. I have listened for nearly two hours 
hypnotised, and have carried away nothing but the memory 
of a golden torrent of words, perfectly expressed and per- 
fectly unintelligible to any healthy student. Yet about 
the time that he was preparing one of these Olympian 
discourses Fred was writing to Lina, saying real things, 
quickly, nervously. 

" No, I have not yet tackled Nordau. I am looking for- 
ward to him much, but have so far, except some Pater (Greek 
studies) mostly fribbled ; two or three Spanish novels ; a 
few short tales by Hardy, clever;, but his figures are talking 
dolls, taught out of a book ; ' L'lnnocente,"* dull, but not 
so coarse as I had understood. ' Tales of Mean Streets ' 
— now there, if you like, is powerful stuff." 

He was myriad-minded ; he had a great heart, and quick 
sympathies. When a lady at a Royal Academy soiree was 
stopped by the porter for some informality in her ticket, it 
was Leighton who rushed forward and waved her inward ; 



TWO R.A. PRESIDENTS 123 

when a student, poorly and shabbily dressed, at one of the 
annual prize-givings, was leaving the building dejected and 
unhappy, it was Leighton who took the student's arm, 
drew him aside, and sat talking to him, fighting his battles 
and encouraging him. 

Leighton had nearly all the gifts, most of the virtues, 
and many of the vanities; but nature denied him the 
supreme gift for which ihe longed of being a great artist. 
Millais could have put him in his pocket. Watts and 
Holman Hunt towered above him. If genius really con- 
sisted in an infinite capacity for taking pains, then Leighton 
would have been greater than any of his great contem- 
poraries. As an artist he was the least of them, as a man 
he overtopped them all. 

His sumptuous Biography in two gorgeous volumes is 
the record of a time, now gone, when painting in this 
country, mainly through the commanding personality of 
the golden-mouthed Leighton, swaggered into a position 
which was untenable. Prices rose, painters built palaces, 
their movements were chronicled in fashionable journals; 
some wore corsets and others acquired a French accent. 
The ordinary man ceased to buy pictures. What had he 
to do with a canvas costing two thousand guineas and 
more, and so large that it could not pass through the door 
of his house ? 

Leighton's influence is past. Art is really in a much 
healthier condition to-day than when he flourished. The 
painter is more of a craftsman, less of a society lion. The 
gods who gave Leighton so many talents refused him pre- 
eminence in any one. 

He was one of the Olympians of the nineteenth century 



124 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

who employed some of his many gifts in painting and 
sculpture. 



EAST AND WEST 

"DOUND for the Royal Academy to find entertainment 
in seeing which of the popular pictures drew the 
greatest crowd, I was arrested by a name — the name Yoshio 
Markino — on a bill in a picture-shop window. It was 
familiar, as I had just read his naive and charming essay 
on his experiences in London. So I entered and spent an 
hour enjoying his sixtj'^-nine pictures. 

This Japanese artist, who has been with us eleven years, 
here gives his impressions of the life and colour of London. 
Sometimes the memory of the art of his country subcon- 
sciously directs his brush, as in the lines of the two very 
Japanesy young women of the hour who are crossing Picca- 
dilly in a fog ; but in *S'i^. Edmund's Chapel, Westminster, 
he has caught the very spirit and tone-values of the English 
fane. His subject always guides his technique. Feeding 
the gulls at Blackfriars, the tide running under the Albert 
Bridge, and London snow-hidden are Whistlerian in treat- 
ment, for Yoshio (I hope he, a Samurai, will not mind being 
called by his first name) loves the artisfs vision seen 
through mists or at the crepuscular hour; but when he 
paints sport, such as a girl driving at golf (so magnificent 
an end of a swing I have never seen), and school-girls playing 
hockey, the Samurai blood quickens. The actions of these 
English girls are as fierce as those of his own brave country- 
men storming a Russian height. 



EAST AND WEST 125 

And while I was studying his pictures, which all show joy 
in the thing seen and the pleasure of self-expression, I was 
conscious of a small, dark-haired figure standing in a corner, 
smiling, and seeming just about as happy as a son of Adam 
can be. His gladness was quite natural. He had painted 
beautiful and interesting sights, and he was delighted that 
others should be enjoying them. I studied him. He was 
clad in a sort of Academic black gown, open at the front, 
and his feet were sandalled. I could not resist speaking to 
him. His outlook as an artist is as happy and childlike as 
his appearance. Everybody was kind. The ladies were 
delightful, the policeman most friendly, and he had not the 
slightest wish to return home. The little ornament on his 
hacri (the gown) was the family crest, hundreds of years 
old — a wistaria flower. His father and grandfather had 
been artists, amateurs ; in their time no Japanese gentle- 
man would demean himself by selling a picture. Now, all 
is changed ! Then we discussed his pictures. I hope he 
sold them all. Had it not been his private view day, I 
would have begged him to accompany me to the Royal 
Academy. 

As I walked towards Burlington House I contrasted the 
happy and hopeful demeanour of the Japanese artist, who 
lives on a few pence a day, and sees beauty everywhere, with 
the demeanour of some of our British painters this week in 
May. Many of them have had a sorry time. The artist 
is a sensitive being by nature, yet it is he who must see in 
one burning week his year's work criticised and commented 
upon, often flouted or despised. The pictures of one of 
them — they hang on the line — have been called "poisonous" 
by an outspoken critic. No other worker in any career has 



126 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

to submit to such a swift and public ordeal. If some of 
the criticisms of pictures I have read had been directed to 
me, I should have — well, I suppose I should have done what 
they do — smile and forget. 

There is something delightfully human about the crowd 
that throngs the Academy on a fine May afternoon. The 
higher art criticism has no more effect upon them than the 
new theology upon a spruce hansom cabdriver. The cha- 
grined artist, dissembling in a high collar and silk hat, by 
mixing with the crowd, and listening, may recover his 
buoyancy. The holiday spectators all wear their best 
clothes ; they know what they like, and they say it jubi- 
lantly. A portrait is not considered by its quality of 
paint, or its fine or emotional drawing, but because it is 
like Aunt Maria, or that man, you know, we always meet 
at the Jenkin-Trotwood's. A landscape is interesting, 
not because of its tone or colour- value, or the loving way 
in which light has been tracked, but because the spectator 
thinks he knows the country depicted. " I've walked that 
very hill," said a dear old gentleman after gazing at 
Sir Ernest Waterlow's A Yorkshire Dale. He beamed as 
he gazed. " Ah ! that's the sort of thing we have in the 
Highlands," said another, as he examined, inch by inch, 
Mr. MacWhirter's A Highland Ravine: Glen Affric^ 
sniffing meanwhile disdainfully the hot air of Gallery III. 

The hot air ! The headaches ! The dazzle ! Will 
the wand of the spirit of new London ever pass over Bur- 
lington House ? I see in dreams these crowded, confused 
rooms given over to the Royal Societies, and a vast and 
airy Palace of Art built in the Green Park, with bands 
and tea-tables as at the Berlin Salon, groves and spacious 



THE NEW SCULPTURE 127 

breezy corridors for the display of the sculpture of the 
year, and pictures all on the line in cool, airy rooms. 



THE NEW SCULPTURE 

X OOKING through the oriel window, after hunger was 
assuaged, I observed in the square outside, rising 
from a mottled base, a statue of an eminent deceased 
citizen in marble frock-coat and trousers, with uplifted 
hand, and right boot advanced. I placed a newspaper 
against the diamond-pane window to hide the thing, and 
remarked, " How hideous ! " There was nothing more to 
say. 

My companions at the luncheon-table smiled. One was 
a Sculptor, one a Painter (of dogs), and the third, at 
present, prefers to express himself in writing. " I suppose 
the poor fellow was following instructions," said the 
Sculptor. " The committee (there is always a committee) 
probably wanted an effigy in frock-coat and trousers." 
" Then he should not have taken the commission," I re- 
torted. "If it is too much to ask that the passer-by 
should be thrilled by a street monument, he at least 
should be spared irritation. In a civilised country such 
an object as that frock-coated citizen, as the figure of 
Cobden in Camden Town, as the dreadful memorial to 
Queen Victoria by St. Mary Abbotfs, Kensington, should 
not be permitted. I could name a score of statues in 
London alone that are commonplace, materialistic, insig- 
nificant. They are eyesores. There should be something 
of the heroic in public monuments. Something noble, 



128 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

mysterious and eternal, like The Sphinx, one of the few per- 
fect examples of solitary monuments raised by man. A 
monument should be in mass, not in detail, simple as death, 
lyrical as spring, never the crude thing itself, but the 
thing seen through the artist-craftsman's imagination, so 
that the passer-by, looking at it, may feel that some vision 
deeper than his own has transfigured the commonplace, 
dignified the homely, shown the soul pulsing within the 
ageing body." 

" Steady ! " said the Painter (of dogs — he also makes 
pictures of impossible race-horses winning impossible 
races). 

I continued undisturbed. " Thornycroft's Gordon in 
Trafalgar Square has something of this personal vision ; 
it's dwarfed, as Gilbert's fountain in Piccadilly Circus is 
eclipsed by the mammoth buildings around. Fm not sure 
that I do not think the Nelson Column the one really 
satisfactory statue-monument in London. Half -hidden in 
a fog, dark against a blood-red sunset, the grimy towering 
shaft, guarded by lions, touches the imagination, suggests, 
leaves something untold." 

" You have been talking about sculpture for a quarter 
of an hour, and you haven't once mentioned the name of 
Rodin," said the Writer with a taunt in his eye. " Amaz- 
ing!" 

" Or Troubetzkoy," interjected the Sculptor. 

" As to Rodin," I said, " he has arrived : he is unap- 
proached ; he should be called Master by all the living and 
most of the dead. He has made marble emotional, brood- 
ing, terrific ; he has created the art anew, raised it from 
the slough where it was left by the average early Victorian 



THE NEW SCULPTURE 129 

practitioners. As to Troubetzkoy, I think his series of 
delightful and natural statuettes may really convince the 
public that a small bronze is a suitable, and, yes ! an 
entertaining decoration for a small room. He has gone 
straight to Nature ; he has not fobbed us off with some- 
thing seen through another man's eyes. And there are 
Englishmen and Australians, young moderns, fine sculptors. 
They—" 

The dog Painter here uttered the word Rosso, which 
had the effect of the words " I spy strangers ! "" suddenly 
spoken in the House of Commons. 

Feeling that the moment could no longer be delayed, I 
said to the Writer, who is a Rossoite, " Tell us about 
Rosso." 

" I skip all the controversial part," he began, " the 
claims made on his behalf that years ago a work of Rosso"'s 
gave Rodin the idea of impressionist sculpture. Rodin 
would have been Rodin anyhow. The question is — does 
Rosso count ? Is his work significant ? Assuredly the 
answer is yes. His theory of sculpture is extraordinarily 
interesting. It fascinates me. That theory is that a 
sculptor should look, say, at a man's face in the same way 
that a painter does, noting only the impression it gives 
him from a distance, of form lurking in light and shade. 
Here are his own words. ' Art must be nothing else than 
the expression of some sudden sensation given us by light. 
There are no such things as painting or sculpture. There 
is only light.' " 

" Good Lord ! " said the dog Painter. 

*' Rosso's work," continued the Writer, " does not deal 
with the exact shapes of things, but with the sudden, vivid, 



im THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

light-illuminated impression starting out from shadow and 
uncertainty. He gives you the face of a woman passing on 
the boulevard, the head of an ailing child, a laugh, the 
figure of a sick man, the impression of pain rather than 
the invalid himself. You must stand away from his 
sculptures. They must be regarded as pictures." 

The dog Painter smiled ; but the Sculptor seemed really 
interested. " Where are they to be seen ? " he asked. 

The Writer mentioned the names of certain galleries. 

We rose to our feet. We called a four-wheeled cab. 

On the way the Sculptor whispered to me, " The test of 
a modeller is the way he treats the hands. It's fearfully 
difficult. I'm told that Troutbetzkoy puts the hands of 
his little figures of men into their trouser pockets." 



MAY IN PARIS 

rilHE sunshine flooded Paris ; the bright streets were 
crowded ; and all through that hot morning the 
motors dodged and darted between the traffic to the 
Tuileries gardens, where they were to be weighed, prepara- 
tory to the great race. One by one they passed through the 
gates, and the air was full of the shouts of chaufl^eurs, the 
odour of petrol, and the cries of dogs ; for in the gar- 
dens a dog-show was also being held. It was Paris at its 
hottest and noisiest moment, and when a friend found me 
staring at a panting car that refused to ascend the slight 
incline to the gardens, and said, " I've seen a dog so small 
that you could slip it into a tea-cup," I felt that trees and 
glades held more attractions than Paris that day. So I 



MAY IN PARIS 131 

departed by steamer up the Seine, passed under a stone 
bridge blazoned with a great N, and disembarked at a 
village where there were trees, a sunny road, and a cafe, 
with tables on which white cloths were spread beneath an 
awning. At the table nearest to the road sat a Frenchman 
drinking absinthe, and under his eyes, and under mine, 
scenes from the pageant of life passed along that village 
road. 

The absinthe drinker dozed and di-eanied in the sunshine, 
looking at nothing in particular, sipping the yellow, 
clouded liquid, contentedly fuddled ; but inside the cafe 
the company of villagers was alert, cheerful, and watch- 
ful. They sang over their meal, and when two priests 
passed by they rose to their feet and hooted. Then the 
soldiers, preceded by a band playing a rousing march, 
swung down the hill, bronzed, dusty, and the villagers 
thumped the tables, ran to the door, and cheered ; but the 
absinthe drinker gazed dully at the men in red and blue, 
as uninterested in them as he had been in the priests. 

After that nothing happened for quite a long time. It 
was enough to sit and gaze at the sunny road, and to 
watch two women across the way carding wool. But no 
French village is long free from the motor-car, and soon it 
came — a racer, of steel, shaped like a torpedo, one man 
huddled in the seat, the other crouched on the step. 
Dust-powdered, hooded, goggled, with heads bent forward, 
every line of their figures rigid with the tension of that 
awful rush across the land, the thing under their sway 
leapt up the hill, gleamed for a moment before our eyes, 
and was gone, while the absinthe drinker sat in the sun, 
staring vacantly at the white table-cloth. 



132 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

Here were the two extremes : those men in the racing 
motor peering on death lurking at every corner — the 
extremity of action and excitement ; and that bemused 
absinthe drinker sitting in the sun — the extremity of 
sloth. 

Or to change the picture — that great stone N, blazoned 
on the bridge across the Seine, and the toy dog in the 
Tuileries " so small that you could slip it into a tea-cup." 



FRANCE KNOWS 

rpURNING into the Rue de TUniversite, where Rodin's 
Paris studios are situated, I recalled the sharp, brief 
talk of that morning with a sculptor-student. 

" I'm going to see Rodin this afternoon," I had said. 

He shrugged his shoulders indifferently, then looked up 
from the figure of Pan he was modelling. There was war 
in his eyes. The wild words that followed are not worth 
recording ; but it was plain, if my friend may be taken as 
representing the younger movement, that the inevitable 
reaction against the extravagances of the extreme Rodin 
school has already begun. 

The sculptor-student said finally : " Rodin is a clever 
craftsman with an instinct for advertisement. Now Jose 
de Charm oy, the sculptor of Baudelaire, is — " 

I cut him short. " Come to-night to the Concerts 
Rouge ; it's a Beethoven evening, and we'll discuss Rodin 
in the intervals." 



FRANCE KNOWS 133 

It was late for an afternoon call on a great man when I 
reached the open ground off the Rue de TUniversite which 
Rodin's studios face. Twilight was falling, and the great 
blocks of marble that littered the space in front of the 
studios had begun to suffer their night change. An 
elderly man, sturdy, strong-featured, grey-bearded, clad in 
the silk hat and black coat of respectability, opened the 
door. It was Rodin. He smiled, grasped my hand, closed 
the door, and turned again to the guests with whom he had 
been conversing, swathing, while he talked, a small clay 
figure in wet cloth. I, well content to be disregarded, 
slipped away and lost myself among the creations, fashioned 
into the strange, still life of sculpture, that peopled those 
vast studios. I was glad to be alone among them : it is 
not one of my ambitions to pay compliments in French to 
the greatest living French aritst. It was a loneliness of 
a new kind, strange and unearthly, among the marbles 
that emerged ghostlike from the gathering shadows. I 
hardly dared to walk about the narrow pathways for fear 
of colliding with some sorrowful figure or group, some 
indistinguishable thing begun long ago, still retained in 
the studio, that the master may continue to work upon it 
when the mood takes him. And, while I crept on tiptoe 
through the twilight among all these silent revelations of 
the eternal human emotions — grief, sorrow, pity, love — 
released from the marble, there, by the door, was the figure 
of their creator, robust, alert, frock-coated, silk-hatted, 
talking trivialities and smiling conventional smiles. It 
seemed so right — this absolute detachment of the artist 
from his work. 

Soaring above my head in a corner of the studio I saw a 



134 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

colossal hand twined around and growing out from a block 
of rough marble. In the great palm of the hand was the 
human family, father, mother and child, resting and nest- 
ling there. I saw at the end of the studio that Gate of 
Helli Rodin's life-work, with the Three Shades^ those 
piteous, drooping figures that are to stand above the door : 
and below brooded the model of his great Penseur. On 
the door, and carved all around it, are endless small figures 
representing the cycle of human tribulation. This Gate 
of Hell is a life-work in itself. Near the bottom of the 
gate, so low that I had to stoop to look at it, was one 
small face, solitary and very sad — a detail, but a detail on 
which all the powers of the sculptor had been lavished. 

Again I turned to him. He was still smiling and 
chattering. The cut of his coat and the shine of his hat 
would not have disgraced a company promoter. There 
was Rodin as the world sees him. But Rodin alone with 
his thoughts — they were around me. 

"You just look at Nature," I hear him say, "and the 
rest happens according to your temperament." True, 
Rodin looked at a man in the attitude of walking, but the 
thought in his brain, the cry of his temperament, was — 
News ! Wonderful News for the World ! and the result 
was John the Baptist proclaiming his news in every line 
and gesture of his body. Rodin read a description of 
Balzac's appearance ; but the artist in him said — Invin- 
cible Will : one man writing with his poor hand the tale 
of the human comedy, and the result was that leonine 
head towering from its mortal garment — Balzac ; not the 
man but the incarnation of Will and Labour. Rodin saw 
his model crouched on the ground, her head buried in the 



FRANCE KNOWS 135 

comforting earth, her wild hair streaming, and the result 
was that epitome of hopeless grief — La Dandide. The 
model for Le Penseur posed before him ; but what Rodin 
saw was Eternity brooding over Time, primal thought 
rapt in the atmosphere of Eternity, watching the sons of 
men, each proud of his particular little ray of the primal 
thought, passing through the dark gate to the grave. 
And the result was Le Penseur. 



The last guests were preparing to leave. I made my 
adieux to the cheery, elderly gentleman called Rodin, who 
was about to catch his train for the outlying suburb where 
he lives. He was fidgeting a little at the possibility of 
being late at the station. 

It was, as I have said, a Beethoven night at the Con- 
certs Rouge, and between the overture to Fidelio and the 
opening adagio of the Septette (op. 20), I told the sculptor- 
student about my visit to Rodin. 

"You see more in his work than there is. Rodin is 
only Rodin." 

*' How do you know what Rodin is 9''"' I said. " Does 
he know himself .'^ The great artist works in the dark. 
He writes a letter, tells us of his adventures in the unseen. 
The words are drab or luminous according to the light 
we bring to the interpretation. Just consider Rodin's 
Genius of War and his Eternal Idol. How wide apart 
is their appeal, yet how instant ! " 

" You over-estimate Rodin,*" said the sculptor-student. 
" You do not know." 



136 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

When we went out into the street during the interval 
there was a man selling plaster plaques of the heads of 
great men. They were nailed to a frame, and the frame 
was propped against the back of a chair. The price of 
each head was fifty centimes. The first head was that of 
Goethe, the second that of Beethoven, the third was 
Rodin's. 

" Look," I said to the sculptor-student. " France 
knows." 

H: iH 4: 4t 4: 

Again I pass in memory through the archway into the 
circular sculpture hall of the new Salon. For me there was 
one thing there — one only : Rodin's headless Homme qui 
marche. It dominated the marbles around. Seeing it I felt 
the masterpiece thrill, the thrill that was mine yesterday when 
I stood upon the Pantheon hill and saw his Penseur 
brooding over Paris. Just outside the building crouches 
this solemnity in bronze. Within, Sainte Genevieve 
watches over the city in Puvis de Chavannes' lovely fresco. 
And in the vaults beneath are the ashes of Victor Hugo. 



GASTON LA TOUCHE AND 
A COMPARISON 

/^N future visits to Paris I shall obtain admittance, 
^~^ somehow, to le salon ovale du MinisUre de 
V Agriculture^ for there M. Gaston La Touche's four 
"panneaux de decoration'''' will be deposited. Fortunate 
Minister of Agriculture! Was there ever such a charming 
painter, so sensitive and intimate, so humorously and 



GASTON LA TOUCHE 1ST 

fragrantly human as this Gaston La Touche, born at St. 
Cloud ? He stands for all that is light and laughing and 
daintily feminine in France. With him love is romance, 
and romance is love. Watteau and Fragonard would 
dance with delight before his pictures. Ugliness and 
brutality may exist, but not in the fairy realms where 
La Touche's fancy plays. It would be like harnessing a 
butterfly, or cataloguing a sunset, to attempt to describe 
these four panels. Let the titles speak. : Le desir de plaire. 
La horde dame, La tendresse du coeur, and Uanwur 
maternel, wherein the delectable monkey, who roams the 
series as a sort of parrot-Puck, is pretending to catch fish 
with a cane for the family dinner. 

These radiant La Touches vibrating with fancy and 
intelligence have, in marked degree, what all the Salon 
pictures, however extravagant and hideous, possess. Behind 
the pranks, pretty nothings and acres of prodigious inven- 
tions, is the well- wrought scaffolding of matiu:e knowledge. 
La Touche's drawing is as sure as in the most blatant 
of the nudes that glare from the walls, offending by 
their indelicacy, intriguing by their craftsmanship. Jean 
Veber''s loathsome contributions have been for so long part 
of the show that one accepts them as necessary episodes. 
The corrupt humour of them ! The stark immodesties of 
MM. Guillaume and Ullman ! I hope, pausing before 
them, that I am admiring their technical qualities. 

This idolising of the nude has been pushed to its utter- 
most point of excellence, in drawing and quality of paint, 
by M. Caro-Delvaille. Accost a painter friend in Paris 
who knows what good work is : he will say, " Have you 
seen the Caro-Delvailles .? " His three sumptuous nudes 



188 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

were grouped together. Manet's Olympia is the motive 
of the largest. No public gallery in London would hang 
it, and every student of art would rave about its technical 
accomplishment. If La Touche stands for all that is 
light and laughing and daintily feminine in Paris, Caro- 
Delvaille stands for the brutality of her perfect achievement 
in craftsmanship. The fleshly thing seen is set down 
resolutely, cynically, and in its way beautifully, for there is 
much of beauty in Caro-Delvaille's pictorial vision. What 
more can I say ? The poet in La Touche illumines his 
craftsmanship. The realist in Caro-Delvaille eliminates 
all spirituality from his achievement. 



A LITTLE ART JOURNEY 
ON THE CONTINENT 

"PERSONALITY is the vital principle in art. Without 
it the picture or statue is unproductive as a dead 
tree in a spring wood. I write in the shade of a clump of 
trees bordering the levels of Holland, within a walk of the 
town where Frans Hals lived and died. ' Yonder are the 
dyke-intersected meadows where roam black cattle with a 
pedigree of a thousand years. And as I write the cuckoo 
calls from the copse. Insistence he has, not personality. 
His note, forcing itself through the moist air, suggests a 
clamorous and eclectic Salon picture compelling attention. 
In the intervals of the cuckoo's cry I look gratefully at a 
bowl of lilies of the valley on my writing table. They do 
not strive or clamour, yet their personality is persuasive 
and intimate. 



A LITTLE ART JOURNEY 139 

I review the pictures seen since I left Paris last week, 
and from the tangle emerge the few that show personality. 
They abide ; they float before me shadowy yet distinct 
as the figures of Alfred de Mussefs creations wrought in 
M. Moncel's marble panel, I recall the Portraits de 
Femmes, from 1870 to 1900, that were hung upon the walls 
of the Bagatelle cottage-mansion in the Bois de Boulogne. 
Many of them were the sensations of past Salons. Insistent 
cuckoos ! Their voice is now stilled. But some, informed 
with personality, are as articulate to-day as the hour they 
were painted. There is Bastien-Lepage's portrait of his 
mother, an old woman with weak eyes and sandy hair, 
quiet as twilight, yet gently touched to life as trees by 
the evening breeze; there is the study of a woman by 
Fromentin, who expressed his personality with equal sensi- 
tiveness whether he held the brush or the pen ; and there is 
Manet's Madame X.^ funereal in raiment, dark in tone, yet 
it dominated the room. Strange it is that this unobtrusive 
portrait should possess such virile power. Nothing came 
between Manet and this forgotten Madame X., posing in 
black silk loose jacket, and fur pork-pie hat with a glint 
of a green wing. He saw her intently, and painted her as 
a man should write a book, without opening another 
volume ; unerringly he set down the precision of modelling, 
the nuances of the planes, the reflections visible only to 
eyes that search ; set all down with clean, unfaltering brush 
marks, and laid the shadow beneath the chin with the 
certainty of a mason laying a brick. " There, that is 
myself," he may have said. " Not necessarily the thing 
itself ; but what I, Edouard Manet, see, and seeing, delight 
to express in my own way." 



140 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

But of all the collections of pictures evocative of 
personality open in Paris during the month, there was 
none so arresting as the exhibition of the works of 
Euo-ene Carriere at the Beaux Arts. His vision of the 
world was entirely personal. Two years ago he was alive 
and working ; to-day we read his letters in these pictures 
describing all he saw, and felt, and loved. The Carriere 
convention of sad, dim figures seen through a mist, as if we 
are looking at a low-toned Maeterlinckian passion through 
a gauze curtain, does not attract everybody. We have all 
suffered from hasty painters, who hide their ignorance 
under an impressionistic blur ; but Carriere was an 
exquisite draughtsman and a master of form, who evolved 
the tender veil that mists his figures from the depths of 
his personality. He never changed this convention. You 
see hints of it in his portrait of the sculptor Devillez (1887) 
and in I,e Premier Voile (1886), that nine-figure New- 
lynesque subject, which has the sensation of wonder and 
the mystic vision that the Newlyners always miss. Many 
painters as they grow old fumble with their visions ; or, 
tiring of the search into Nature, merely repeat what they 
saw when the eyes were keen and the heart responsive. 
Carriere, as the years passed, felt more deeply, and put a 
more intimate loveliness into the forms lurking in the 
shrouding mists of his pictures. The outside world became 
less and less to him, the faces and emotions of his loved 
ones meant more and more. And so we have themes 
repeated again and again, each showing a different vision 
of feeling, under such titles, very eloquent to those who 
knew Carriere, as Tendi-esse, MaterniU^ Intimites Caresse^ 
Sommeil. Of this exquisite artist the words of Job may be 



A LITTLE ART JOURNEY 141 

used, " He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and 
bringeth out to light the shadow of death." 

From Paris I journeyed to Brussels, and hastened to 
the Grand Place, eager to stand again in that finest of 
mediseval squares and watch the setting sun fire the gold 
of the Hotel de Ville and the Guild Houses ; then up to 
the stupendous Palais de Justice, which one may, without 
exaggeration, call the finest modern building placed on the 
finest site. The sun was setting. Far below me the 
gabled houses, all beautifully in tone, slumbered on the 
Netherlands plain. But I went to Brussels to look at 
modern pictures and sculptures. 

Constantin Meunier ! Can we wonder that this Belgian 
sculptor achieved an European reputation ? The Millet of 
the artificer and the artisan looms out at Brussels a unique 
and impressive personality, as in the Luxembourg Gallery 
at Paris, as at Antwerp, where his fine figure of a 
stevedore, symbolising the Belgian seaport, seems, standing 
in front of the Royal Museum, more important than the 
pile of buildings it fronts. Rodin is the sculptor of 
emotion ! Meunier is the sculptor of toil ! Each entirely 
himself, the trained hand of each recording the visions seen 
and felt through the span of working years. At Brussels is 
Rodin's twining Caryatid, a dreamy thing, but half released 
from the rough marble; at Brussels is Meunier's piercingly 
realistic group of a peasant mother finding her son lying 
dead at the pit mouth. 

In the Brussels picture gallery I found a superb Lenbach 
— his half-length of Dr. Dollinger, all brain and asceticism 
and desire for knowledge ; also a Christ Mocked by La 
Touche, a gasp of blurred reds, that sways out from the 



142 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

canvas like a reproach ; also a sheepfold by the self-taught 
Segantini, as personal an impression as a pastoral 
impromptu by a boy Chopin ; and a Constable^ a mere 
sketch of sky and sea and dunes — lovely, unforgettable. 

At Bruges I found no modern pictures. In that city, 
which Le Sidaner painted, one spends the day among the 
Memlincs in the Hospital of St. John, and remembers that 
the dear illusion of our youth about Memlinc, the wounded 
soldier, painting these pictures in gratitude for the care 
and nursing of the sisters — is a legend merely. There are 
no documents. Oh ! those documents. 

At Antwerp I struck a vein of gold. I had wandered 
out at twilight, an old joy, to let my eyes travel upwards 
from the wrought-iron cupola of Quentin Matsys' well 
(strange that a blacksmith should have painted such 
delicate pictures !) to the topmost embroidered pinnacle 
of the cathedral tower, when I noticed an advertisement 
announcing a memorial exhibition of the works of Alfred 
Stevens, the Belgian, not the English master. This was 
the gold, a chance treasure- trove of travel. 

The Stevens pictures were displayed at the Antwerp 
Museum. The subjects are negligible. Stevens needed 
no recondite, religious, or mystical theme for the expression 
of his temperament. A woman, a mondaine, beautifully 
gowned, adorned with the feminine fripperies of the day? 
sufficed. He expresses no deep passion, no delirium of 
joy. His Parisiennes have their little troubles of love, of 
loss, of regret ; but, whatever the momentary disillusion 
or emotion may be, his mondaine is always elegant, 
whether the pretty creature is considering a love letter, 
entering a room and wondering gracefully who has sent 



A LITTLE ART JOURNEY 143 

the bouquet of flowers, demurely receiving a visit of 
condolence, or giving her breast to a baby. But study 
the painting of the frocks and furbelows, the arrangement 
of his dainty interiors, the quality of his workmanship ! 
The sheen of finest silk, the bloom on a peach, sunlight 
filtering through muslin curtains, falling on damask, bowls 
of roses, silver and old glass, could not be more exquisite. 
Time and change cannot lessen one touch of the beauty of 
his painting of a muslin dress over a pink petticoat in such 
a picture as La Dame en Rose. The flower garden that 
Stevens tilled may have been small, but he tilled it with 
incomparable art. 

It needed a nights rest and the journey to Amsterdam 
to loose me from the Alfred Stevens obsession. I found 
the antithesis in the finest picture Israels ever painted — 
the old Jew seated at the door of his store, eternal longing, 
eternal sadness. And I found the wave-crest of modern 
Dutch art in the clear-sighted pastorals of Mauve, in the 
seascapes of Jacob Maris, and in a simple view of houses 
and a road, a perfect thing, by Matthew Maris the Mystic. 
With that master I was well content to end my joiurney. 



JUNE 



^ 



JUNE 



PADDINGTON OR LYONESSE 

"DEING a fine morning, I proposed to walk to the 
-^ British Museum and glance over the Illuminated 
Manuscripts. I went by way of that unchanging bypath 
of the metropolis that we call Venice in London, situated 
in muddy canal-land that confronts you when, wool-gather- 
ing, you take a wrong turning or two out of Westbourne 
Grove. Once at Venice in London there is nothing to do 
but to stroll along the banks of the canal to Maida Vale. 
For he who finds running water in London leaves it un- 
willingly. Painted barges pass along the canal, and the 
man at the tiller is a traveller, gliding through London's 
roots, ever coming, ever going. "Whence.? Whither .?" 
I ask myself. 

The Illuminated Manuscripts had tarried so many cen- 
turies, they could wait a day longer. Moreover, the sun 
was shining, and that running water, rather muddy, bearing 
the painted barges, made me think of winding mossy ways, 
and pleasant, pastoral things. So I returned to Padding- 
ton and bought a ticket for Uxbridge, knowing that for 
many miles, even to Rickmansworth, one can follow the 
banks of this same canal through country places. 

But I did not walk the many miles to Rickmansworth. 
I was hindered by a rifle club. It did not mean to dis- 
commode and disturb me — why should it ? — but the sight 



148 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

of those militant citizens swarming out of Uxbridge 
Station towards some adjacent butts set my mind — well, it 
must out ! — on the rifle club that I joined in the time of 
corn harvest last year. Instead of walking to Rickmans- 
worth, I sat in a green meadow by the banks of the canal, 
the water here sweet and clear, near to a fisherman, 
watching the painted barges pass, and hearing occasionally 
the faint crack of a rifle. It all came back to me — that 
day, in the time of corn harvest, in a country, always 
calling, that was once named Lyonesse, not far from the 
fabled hunting grounds of King Arthur. 

Having borrowed a Lee-Enfield from a Volunteer, and 
paid my subscription of five shillings, I purchased three 
brown paper packets of cartridges, Mark II., each contain- 
ing ten missiles. Why did I join a rifle club ? Because 
every male and female in these islands should learn to ride, 
to shoot, to swim, to sail a boat, and to appreciate Velas- 
quez and his parents. 

After an early luncheon I set forth, tramped over the 
towans, crossed the ferry, and landed on that wild head- 
land at the extremity of which, deep below, is the seals' 
cave, whither at midnight adventurous rope-girt sports- 
men descend to do battle. 

I saw no seals that day, no life but the eddying gulls, 
one tethered ass, and a hobbled sheep, until from a lone 
hillock I looked down upon a group of my companions in 
arms firing at the 200 yards range. 

I settled myself face downwards full length upon the 
sand, listened to instructions, tried to understand, inserted 
the cartridge, clicked the bolt home, placed the ponderous 
weapon against my shoulder and tried to align the front 



PADDINGTON OR LYONESSE 149 

and rear sights on the bullseye. The scheme was pro- 
found ; but the oscillation of the muzzle of my rifle was 
prodigious. I held my breath. I pulled the trigger. 
The bullet pinged forth, then a pause. A flag waved. 
"Amiss!" cried the sergeant. In the seven shots that 
followed the marksman registered one magpie, two outers, 
and four misses. 

A larger\bullseye is employed at the 500 yards range ; 
but it looked very small, about the size of the mouth of a 
flower-pot. I fired. A black disc rose and dallied in front 
of the bull. I was about to lower my head in shame 
when, to my amazement, the sergeant cried — " A bullseye ! " 

Let the rest be silence. 

Rising to my feet I stretched my cramped legs. Shoot- 
ing at a target should be a reposeful form of exercise. 

The tethered ass tried to follow me homeward, but I 
hastened on, and having reached the river hailed the ferry- 
man. My practised eye told me that there was a man in 
the stern of the ferry boat nursing a shot gun. As we 
crossed the river he fired three times at the curlews that 
were swooping seaward after feeding on the mud flats. 
When he fired the birds swerved a little eastward as if 
saying " Bother ! He's at it again ! " I was not ill- 
pleased to think that this sportsman was not the only 
gunner who made misses. It had been a glorious day, 
that day in Lyonesse, and bloodless as the ofiering of 
Melchizedek. 

Then the land of Lyonesse faded into fable again. I 
was back in the environs of Uxbridge. The sun was sink- 
ing. The firing had ceased ; but the painted barges 
drawn by slow horses, with tin pannikins containing their 



150 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

food hitched to their heads, still glided along the old high- 
way. I hailed a man at the tiller, and asked him whither 
he was going, half believing he would answer — " Lyonesse." 

The word he shouted back was " Paddington ! " 

Next day I went to Lyonesse. 



THE MAN WHO TOOK NO RISKS 

"'M going," said the gypsy, testing with his thumb the 
edge of the knife he had been grinding. 

" Yes," snapped his old wife, " because you'll get from 
the rauni 'alf a pound of tobacco for goin\" 

" There's the bill of the service," said the gypsy, between 
the paroxysms of a cough that shook his body. He was 
eighty-two. 

The pink bill announced that a Birmingham revivalist 
would conduct a week's mission at the Primitive Methodist 
chapel by the cross-roads, within a stone's throw of the 
gyps es' tent. Members of all denominations were invited, 
and at the foot of the bill this was printed: — "The 
Heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to them that 
seek Him." 

" You're a nice one, James Lovell, to sit on a chapel- 
bench singin' 'ymns and seekin' the 'oly Spirit," cried the 
old woman, stripping the skin off a rabbit with the ease of 
one who has been doing it for three-score years. " A man 
of your age ! Shoo ! " Then she volunteered the incre- 
dible news that she had bought the rabbit in a shop. 

" I'm going," said the old man. He had long ceased to 
argue with women. 



THE MAN WHO TOOK NO RISKS 151 

I proceeded leisurely on my way. Yonder I saw the 
route, a glint of road creeping over the shoulder of the 
hill. The stack and engine-house of a discarded mine 
stood sentinel against the gash of white road. I paused 
when I reached the summit, and watched the smoke of the 
gypsies' peat fire. The smoke, the tent, the piled refuse 
from the discarded mines, the chapel at the cross-roads, in 
which a light gleamed, the solemn encompassing hills — 
that was the landscape. Near by a hawk poised. In my 
ears was the screech of the gulls, and that irregular 
monotonous rumble of the mining stamps poimding, not 
tin-ore newly dug, but barrow-loads of the refuse piled on 
the earth years ago when Cornwall, eager for copper, was 
impatient with the humbler metal. 

I gazed over the land that Wesley awakened, where his 
influence still broods, holding the miners and mariners in 
firm, intangible grasp. The Wesley an Methodists were 
awaiting with trembling eagerness the coming of the Holy 
Spirit. They had heard of the descent of the Holy Spirit 
upon Wales, and their arms were open, their faces raised, 
their hearts burdened. To-night, at six, the week's 
Revivalist services at the Primitive Methodist chapel at 
the cross-roads begins. And that godless man, that wise 
vagrant, Lovell, the gypsy, grinder of knives, maker of 

clothes-pegs at a penny a dozen, and , and , is to 

be present. 

I knew that he would attend the revivalist service, but 
I did not strike straight to the chapel. In a near valley a 
slight trout stream raced through a little wood. What 
would you have ? Angling for trout when all nature is ting- 
ling with the rapture of re-birth is jointly a part of life with 



152 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

the fugitive saving of souls at a revivalist service. I spied 
a young trout in the bed of the stream, noticed that the 
branches of the ash trees were purple against the loam on 
the rising hill, and that, as the gulls turned in the air, 
their wings were grey-blue. Half an hour later, a little 
troubled by a sore heel, I entered the chapel. 

Although the first hymn was over, two-thirds of the high 
wooden pews were empty. The revivalist, a strenuous, 
shock-headed youth, was devoid of magnetism ; but he had 
acquired the catch- words — " What a splendid time we're 
having ! " " O, how we're going to enjoy ourselves this 
week ! " With the veins outstanding upon his forehead 
he entreated the Holy Spirit to comfort Cornwall as it had 
comforted Wales. The children stared at him wide-eyed ; 
the battered faces of the mariners who sat in rows in the 
high pews and the pale faces of the miners were sympa- 
thetic, but critical. Once, once only, when he flung himself 
half out of the pulpit and entreated the Lord to give them, 
just for that night, their heart's desire, did his emotion 
communicate itself to one of the flock — a black-bearded, 
black-haired sailor, ear-ringed, signed and sealed by his 
Spanish ancestry. He writhed in his seat, then clambered 
upon it like one possessed, and, leaning over the barrier, 
threw out his rough hands, bowed his head, shook and 
wept, never wiping the tears away. 

" O Lord give us our heart's desire, grant it speedily, O 
Lord," groaned the revivalist, and terrible cries went up 
from the ear-ringed sailor ; but the gypsy-man, Lovell, was 
silent. He pursed his lips, rubbed his unshaven chin, and 
immediately the service ended left the chapel. Cleverly 
he evaded the proffered hand of the revivalist, who. 



THE OPEN GATE 153 

hastening from the pulpit, had stationed himself at the 
door, crying, as he grasped the extended hands : " O, what 
a time weVe had, friends ! What a splendid, glorious 
time ! " 

It was raining. The gypsy paused in a doorway to light 
his pipe. I followed him across the common. Very old 
the gypsy looked, very unfit to be exposed to such weather, 
very unsuited to sleep in a tent. My heart softened. I 
thought of nice little almshouses around London, of votes 
that could be procured by persistent letter writing. 
Thereupon I hailed the old gypsy, overtook him at the 
tent door, and said : " Wouldn't it be much better if 
you and your wife spent the rest of your days in a nice 
little cottage ? "" 

" Cottage ? " he echoed. " Four walls and draughts ! 
No, no ! A man at my age doesn't take risks." 

His boots quelched through the mud, and his octoge- 
narian body carrying his unsaved soul stumbled through 
the flap door of the tent, leaving behind a cloud of rank 
tobacco smoke. 



THE OPEN GATE 

IDEFORE I began the walk across the hills, the Student 
-^"^ gave me a twopenny pamphlet called " The Soul of 
a Nation." 

" Read it when you see the Open Gate," he said. 

A day's journey was before me, and the way was solitary ; 
but the flowers were out, and summer was in the air. Up 
Trencrom I climbed, that sentinel outpost hill of Western 



154. THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

Cornwall, where the Romans held a camp, and built the 
fortress whose walls and gates can still be traced on the 
turf. In fancy I saw the Roman captain, gaunt and hard- 
visaged, gazing from the ramparts over the barbarous land 
of his exile, savagely contrasting its inhospitable hills with 
the emblazoned walls of imperial Rome. 

I pressed forward, remembering the Student's words ; 
crossed the old road and struck westward, following no 
path, up and down, making for the height above the open 
gate. What is the open gate ? Listen. 

Three leagues out at sea, on either side of the coast of 
Western Cornwall, the fishermen, looking across the land 
through a gap in the cliff, discern no] land between them 
and the horizon. It is as if the sea flowed through the 
valley, linking the ocean on their side to the ocean on the 
other side of Cornwall. They call this gap in the cliff 
through which they look " the Open Gate." 

From the summit of Rosewall Hill I gazed down upon 
the open gate. I saw the valley, with its village and church 
tower, stretching away to the Penzance coast ; but the 
men in yonder red-sailed mackerel boat, three leagues out 
at sea, saw the water seemingly surging like a wide river 
across the land. It is said that some of the mariners 
choose this fishing-ground so that the open gate shall be 
always before their eyes. 

Presently I began to read the pamphlet given me by the 
Student. I read to the end of the eleven pages ; then I re- 
read them. And I read it a third time, wondering as I read. 

" How strange a thing is this," I reflected. " Here is a 
philosophy, a code of ethics, a rule of life — call it what 
you will — that can be traced back for 1500 years in the 



THE OPEN GATE 155 

history of Japan. Through the principles of this philo- 
sophy, called ' bushido,' Japan conquered Russia. It is 
the national ideal, followed and practised by millions ; if 
all the forty-six millions in Japan attain the ideal that the 
'bushi' seeks, Japan, having conquered herself, could, 
if she desired it, conquer the world. ' Bushido ' incor- 
porates many of the teachings of Christianity. It is not 
a State religion ; it has neither forms nor ritual, but it is 
practised throughout Japan. It teaches the soldier and 
citizen that personal glory is nothing ; that the individual 
must sacrifice himself for the good of the State and for the 
happiness of his dead, whose spirits still remain in the 
world ; that the dead need the affection of the living ; that 
spirit eyes are always watching, and spirit ears always 
listening, and that the dead are only happy when the living 
are fulfilling the ideals of ' bushido.' The ' bushi ' — and 
each unit of the warrior caste of ' Samurai ' is a ' bushi ' 
— chooses poverty before wealth, humility before ostenta- 
tion, self-sacrifice before selfishness." 

" I have been called," said Admiral Togo, addressing 
the Japanese who had died for their country, " to report 
our successes to the spirits of those who sacrificed their 
earthly existence for the attainment of so great a result.*" 

" Let every man,"" said Admiral Yuasa before Port 
Arthur, " put aside all thought of making a name for 
himself, but let us all work together for the attainment of 
our object." 

Our object ! In peace and war the same. The sacri- 
fice of self for an ideal. The pursuit of loyalty, courage, 
poverty, simplicity, temperance, chastity, and charity. 

As I considered this strange matter — this idealism of 



156 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

a pagan nation, strong in the citizen soul-life as on the 
battlefield — I understood why the student of Eastern re- 
ligions had bidden me read the pamphlet when I reached 
the hill above the open gate. 

When I returned the pamphlet that night to the 
Student I said : " I have seen the open gate, and I have 
read the message. The ideal of Japan is Sparta and 
Plato's ' Republic ' become one." 

" It is the dawn of the millennium," said the Student. 
" Once more the gate is opening from the East." 

" The West is gazing and wondering," said I. 

"And listening," added the Student. 



FAITH 

fTlHERE is no road to the little lonely church, built of 
Cornish granite, on the edge of the moor ; but I 
heard the bells, as I descended from the hills past the 
Cromlech and other prehistoric monuments, steering 
my course by the lure of the bells. Bridle paths dart 
here and there. They are now overgrown by gorse and 
bracken, but in old days the tracks were kept clear by the 
files of tin-laden ponies driven by the ancient miners down 
to St. Michael's Mount, where the Phoenicians greeted the 
black-garbed Cornish, tempting them with bright stuffs and 
strange ornaments. But I met no Cornish ponies that day, 
for the mines are deserted — only a child gathering violets : 
heard nothing but the cry of a curlew and the invitation 
of the church bells : saw only, when I turned back and 
faced the hills, the carn-crested heights, the Cromlech where 



FAITH 157 

ages ago some chieftain was laid to rest, and far away on 
the sky-line, looking like a row of ninepins, a Stone Circle. 
Soon, deep in the valley, rose the grey square church 
tower, but I could see no houses. How many farms are 
there in the scattered moorland church-town, as they call 
the village ? Perhaps six. Descending, I picked out the 
congregation walking over the rough ground — yeomen, 
whose families have worked the soil for centuries : their 
forerunners' names are fading on many tombs. This 
remnant of weathered men and pale wives, whom Wes- 
leyanism has not touched, filled the little granite church. 
We waited, gazing through the thirteenth-century chancel 
arch, past the swinging oil lamp, to the plain altar decked 
with daffodils. The bells ceased ; the four ruddy choir- 
boys, who knew more about heifers than canticles, shuffled 
to their places, followed by the vicar in thick boots. They 
clattered on the flags. He was a typical Cornishman — 
dark, lank, bearded, lantern-jawed, suUen-visaged. I 
wondered what sort of spiritual sustenance he would offer 
this flock in a lonely land, cut off from social intercourse, 
so dependent upon the church. The Lessons and Prayers 
did not gain in beauty from his rasping voice ; his intona- 
tion was discordant, and when he entered the pulpit and an- 
nounced the text haltingly, with lowered eyes, I felt sorry 
for that unfed flock. But there came a moment in the ser- 
mon when he looked up and said : " Before Abraham 
was, I am .... And, lo, I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world." Then I saw the eyes of faith, 
faith absolute, dwelling in the innermost. His eyes glowed ; 
they drew every wandering gaze ; they exorcised every 
vagrant doubt with their unspoken " I believe," final and 



158 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

complete. His words, caught in the searchlight of his eyes, 
became, for the moment, infallible proofs. The fanciful 
faiths of the outside world were motes in a sunbeam. In 
this crowded, steaming, little church on the moor, reeking 
with the odour of oil and the farmyard, glowed the central 
light. His formula was as simple as the skyline of the 
hills. " When you have doubts,"" his raucous voice whis- 
pered, "believe all the more." Then he told us of his 
favourite vision that always came to him in silent hours : 
the sounding of the trumpet and the Blessed rising and 
flocking to the Throne ; he tried to picture the ineff'able 
contentment of the multitude. But when he lowered his 
eyes the spell broke, and I was again a watcher outside the 
fold, but sure that his sheep had been gathered in. 

I left the little church, and walked westward by the sea- 
road under a night of stars. Hanging near the Milky Way 
was a sun a thousand times larger than our luminary, the star 
called Arcturus — a spot of dazzling light which astronomers 
tell us is rushing through space at the rate of three hundred 
and eighty miles a second. Strange things that I had read 
about Arcturus flashed through my mind ; that aeons 
hence he will burn up our system : that this burning 
has happened again and again : that you, and I, and the 
man of Faith with the harsh voice and the glowing eyes in 
the little church on the moor, are but passing incidents in 
a series of races and empires, extending back through im- 
measurable ages, ever striving towards perfection, ever, at 
the appointed time, shrivelled in the magnificence of 
Arcturus. Above me, as I walked, shone the placid 
menace in the night-blue sky, a morsel of lovely glow 
above the shoulder of the earn. Then th^ black moors 



FAITH 159 

opened to my vision, and I saw the Astronomer Priests 
standing four thousand years ago, within the Stone Circle 
at Tregaseal, watching for Arcturus to rise over the Hoot- 
ing Carn, in perfect faith that he would rise as he had risen 
before : that their clock-star would never deceive them. 

Sir Norman Lockyer, and other astronomers of the 
twentieth century, claim to have read the riddle of these 
Stone Circles which the Astronomer Priests, having heard 
the whispered wisdom from Egypt, raised on moor and 
hill. They had found that there is order in the heavens, 
as in the procession of the seasons upon the earth : that at 
a certain minute of a certain day, once a year, the sun 
would rise and set always in the same place ; that Arcturus, 
the Pleiades, Capella and other of the heavenly bodies, 
would faithfully perform their service as clock-stars, rising 
and setting at the appointed times. When each year the 
Astronomer Priest, standing in the centre of Tregaseal 
Circle, gazed to the north, he knew that the moment 
Arcturus appeared over the Hooting Carn the time for 
the sowing of certain crops, or the performance of religious 
rites, had come. 

Perfect faith on the moors four thousand years ago, the 
ancient Cornish gathered around the Stone Circle waiting 
for the Priest to reveal his inner knowledge : perfect faith 
in the Uttle church to-day, the farmers and miners waiting 
till the Priest, looking up, shall flash his truth to their 
expectant souls. 

So, as I walked westward by the sea-road, Ai'cturus, 
hanging over the carn, seemed to stand for the continuity 
of life, for rule, order, and a plan ordained from the begin- 
ning. This Menace took on an air of friendliness and 



160 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

obedience. For is not gigantic Arcturus in bond to a 
still greater central force controlling and imperceptibly 
drawing to itself all the suns and systems ; and that central 
sun, is it not but one of the workers fulfilling the dream 
of the Great Architect, who knows the End ? But the 
darkness of the way, the vastness of the design, and the 
fugitive and infrequent glimpses of a Father's love ! My 
feet were lifted from the ground at the thought ; my 
dazed brain broke its confines and floated horribly in icy 
space. I felt fear and the old need of a compassionate 
and comprehending mediator, longed for a hand to 
stretch forth from the awful void, and a voice to say — 
what ? 

Then the lights of the village whither I was bound 
twinkled out. And with that human sight I heard again 
the voice of the Priest in the little church, reeking with 
the odour of oil and the farmyard. He was saying : " Lo, 
I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." 



A PAINTER AT WORK 

rpHE landscape painter was sitting in his wild garden, 
which lies six miles from the nearest railway station. 
The June sun blazed down upon his roses (has there ever 
been such a year for roses ?) and flooded a field of foxgloves 
with sunlight, that he could see between an archway of 
trees leading from his garden. 

It was that field of foxgloves, palpitating and dazzling, 
that he was trying to paint, and he was finding it very 
difficult, for no colour that man has ever found or manu- 



A PAINTER AT WORK 161 

factured approaches anywhere near to the brilliance of 
sunlight. 

The painter keyed up his picture to the limit, but it fell 
far short of the vibrating light on those near roses and far 
foxgloves, which seemed like live things moving and 
scintillating in the breeze ; and he was much too sincere an 
artist to emphasise the darks of the arch of trees in order 
to accentuate the lights on the flowers. 

He was enjoying himself immensely, seated under his 
white umbrella, peering with half-closed eyes at the glory 
of that sunlight, putting spots and patches of pure colour 
on his canvas, seeing the pink roses, the shady arch, and 
the nodding foxgloves gradually taking shape on the 
staring canvas, envying nobody in the world ; he was 
painting for love, not for the market. 

His conscience was quite at rest. He had been to 
church that morning. True, he had sat in the last seat, 
listening to the hum of insects beyond the porch, and 
watching out of the tail of his eye the sun flickering through 
the branches of the old elm in the churchyard, and diaper- 
ing the turf with jewels of light. True he had withdi'awn 
before the sermon ; but he had been to church. 

Now, as he sat in his garden screwing up his eyes against 
the light on those foxgloves, two lines of verse came into 
his head, and he murmured them aloud — 

" Pan through the pastures oftentimes hath run 
To pluck the specMed foxgloves from their stem^ 

Suddenly something started across the lawn. He 
jumped, rubbed his eyes, and laughed. It was not Pan, 
but it was one of Pan's kindred — a pied wagtail that 



162 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

hopped here and there making absurd antics in its 
endeavour to snap flies into its long beak. For five minutes 
he watched the bird, and when he turned again to the 
foxgloves he found, to his annoyance, that they were no 
longer in sunlight. That is the great difficulty with which 
the 'plein air landscape painter contends. The effect is 
never the same for a quarter of an hour, and the sun-painter 
is in still worse case. 

So he leaned back in his chair, and ruminated on the 
development of landscape painting and its history. It was 
strange to think that landscape painting, which he had 
always considered as the most delightful branch of art, 
only began to be regarded seriously in the seventeenth 
century. Before that period Flemish, Dutch, and 
Italian painters had floated beautiful peeps of landscape 
into the backgrounds of religious pictures ; but those were 
the days when painters were ordered to make manifest 
in their pictures " to the unlettered and ignorant the 
miraculous things achieved by the power and virtue of the 
Faith "" ; and they could only use landscape as an accessory. 
Little did the Van Eycks and Memlinc think that many 
men to-day would enjoy their landscape backgrounds more 
than the saints and sepulchres in the foreground. 

" I suppose," soliloquised the landscape painter, trying 
to find a comfortable place in the back of his deck chair 
to rest his head, " that Joachim Patinir of Dinant, who 
was born nobody quite knows when, but it was before the 
year 1500, was the first painter of pure landscape. There's 
a picture by him in the National Gallery, a blue thing 
c&W&di River Scene. It's a joy." 

" Then comes Titian with his four great landscapes, 



SUNSHINE IN THE GUILDHALL m^ 

three of which are lost. And after him, a century later, 
the mighty, exuberant, untiring Rubens, of the seventeenth 
century, whom I admire enormously without liking a bit. 
He painted many landscapes, fruity dark things that 
suggest the studio rather than the sun. Then Claude, who 
deserves the title of the first gi'eat landscape painter. It 
was he who inflamed the ambition of the greatest of them 
all — Turner, parent of the modern sunlight movement, 
as Constable was the godfather of the landscape movement 
of last century in France, called after Barbizon, where 
Corot and his ever-to-be-admired brethren (I'm talking 
like the Kaiser) worked and produced masterpieces. It's 
strange to think that the finest living landscape painter, 
Harpignies, painted with Corot, and is painting now, past 
his eightieth year, as well as ever. Heigh-ho ! "" 

The landscape painter examined his attempt at roses 
and foxgloves in sunlight, and tossed it upon the grass, 
but face upwards. He was a careful man, with an eye to 
the future even in his moods. " Monet is the only man 
who could have suggested that vibrating light," he 
muttered. "I'll try something easier, and call it Now 
Came Still Evening" On.'''' 



SUNSHINE IN THE GUILDHALL 
rpHE June sun blazed down upon Cheapside. 

Citizens, in summer attire, jostled each other on the 
sidewalks, some venturing now and then to cross the road, 
where the mass of traffic rolled on at foot pace in the sun- 
shine, the back of one vehicle brushed bv the bewildered 



164 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

head of the horse that followed. The roofs of the omni- 
buses, petrol and equine, were weighed down by women in 
bright dresses and showy hats, and through the hurly burly 
automobiles glided, leaving a trail of oil that consorted 
evilly with the odour of the sun-softened asphalt. It was 
a day when the thoughts of the dazed pedestrian fly lightly 
to Landscape Land, where lie meadows and streams, lazy 
kine, fields of buttercups, the drone of bees and flights 
of birds black against the heat haze. 

Suddenly an explosion, a terrific explosion, broke in 
Cheapside, and smoke pufffed up from the ground. Horses 
reared, a hansom cab collided against a brougham, and a 
motor-bus struck a lamp-post. Some one cried, " A bomb ! 
Run ! " But nobody ran. It was merely a burst tyre, and 
in ten seconds the traffic was again rolling on sullenly in the 
sunshine. 

I did not wait to see the mending of the tyre, for the 
idea of Landscape Land was in my mind. So I turned 
down King Street and sought the cool shades of the Guild- 
hall, eager after a certain Flemish picture in the Corpora- 
tion Art Gallery that I desired to see again. It is by a 
painter who lived long, long ago, who saw a sunrise and 
put the dawn-flush into a picture. That was a rare thing 
for a painter to do nearly five hundred years ago. 

He, for the sake of whose landscape steeped in the light 
of the rising sun I forsook the excitement of a burst tyre 
in Cheapside, was born long before Titian. He was one of 
the earliest painters, perhaps the earliest, to see the beauty 
of nature, to trap his vision, and to realise it beautifully in 
the background of a picture. 

It is called The Three Maries at the Tomb of Our Lo?d. 



SUNSHINE IN THE GUILDHALL 165 

It was No. 1 in the Guildhall Loan Collection, and might 
have pleased Blake, who in one of his dreams desired to 
build " Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land." 
Behind the empty tomb, the angel, and the three Maries 
rises Jerusalem in a green upland, with mountains beyond, 
and an overarching blue sky flecked with gold. In the 
lightening heavens is a flight of birds, soaring through the 
freshness and the silent movements of early morning. 
Beyond the upland is a huddle of delicate towers and 
domes — the city of Jerusalem, But it does not matter 
what the towers represent. What does signify is that 
their tops catch the early rays of the sun, and that in this 
picture, Hubert Van Eyck (probably his brother John 
helped him) looked at nature, saw her beauty, and pointed 
the way to the many landscape painters who have followed 
and have felt the breezes and the sunshine. And the 
whirligig of time brought his quiet message into the City 
of London, on a June day in the twentieth century. 

Brought, too, into the Guildhall a landscape background, 
by Hans Memlinc, who was just beginning to walk when 
Hubert Van Eyck died. It is called The Virgin Mother with 
Donors and Saints. I did not look at the figures of the 
Saints and Donors, although the badge of the white lion of 
the house of Marche, appended to their collars of roses 
and suns, is attractive. I looked beyond the figures to the 
landscape, and thought how Memlinc must have enjoyed 
painting it. One may detect a note of sadness in Hubert 
Van Eyck's upland and sky, as if he were not quite assured 
that he should allow his heart to be light, and his vision 
gay, when painting an entombment ; but Memlinc's sunny 
landscape is happy as larks singing above a heath at mid- 



166 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

summer. His fancy has run with his theme, and he has 
introduced swans in a stream, with a miller on the bank, 
the reflections of trees in the water, and a knight pricking 
his way through the shade ; and all this lovely landscape 
is sun drenched. These two backgrounds are the begin- 
nings of the expression of man"'s joy in Nature. 

Beginnings ? Yes ! Then I turned to Animals Resting", 
by Alfred Verwee, painted in 1890, four hundred years later, 
to find that the wheel has come full circle. No longer is a 
landscape the background of a picture ; it spreads richly 
over the whole surface. Cinderella no longer shrinks into 
the background. She sits at a high table. Here are no 
figures of men and women, but our brothers of the fields 
— oxen and birds — great, somnolent beasts that stand or 
recline in vast meadow-lands, with birds above, while 
the sun, a ball of fire, sinks. Just the rim is above the 
horizon, and all the sky is flecked with gold, while night 
clouds sweep up. 

Hubert Van Eyck and a modern ! The beginnings of 
landscape art in the Low Countries, and an example of 
the splendour of its fulfilment, by a modern Belgian, 
hanging not far apart in the Guildhall of the largest city 
in the world. 

I was glad I forsook that burst tyre outside the late Sir 
John Bennett's shop in Cheapside. 



AN OLD MASTER IN WHITECHAPEL 167 



AN OLD MASTER IN WHITECHAPEL 

TT was plain that I had come into a strange country, 
the country called Whitechapel, so far removed from 
the dweller in the west of London. 

That the streets are grey, and that the men and women 
who hurry along the crowded pavements look pale and 
eager was no surprise ; nor was I envious to see in shop 
windows placards drawing attention to " Gents'" Neglige 
Shirts for 2s. 4id." and " Footwear 4s. 9d. a Pair,'' for 
things should be cheap in Whitechapel if anywhere ; but 
I blinked at the sight of wagons laden with hay standing 
in the middle of the High-street, marked " Whitechapel 
Haymarket," and if I was not thunderstruck at the fan- 
tastic architecture of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, look- 
ing like the fa9ade of an Art Nouveau demi-palace strayed 
out of Vienna, it was only because I had visited the gallery 
before. 

The Whitechapel picture exhibitions are always interest- 
ing, always crowded. 

What the men in cloth caps and hob-nail boots, and the 
women with shawls over their heads make of it all I cannot 
imagine ; but they take picture-seeing seriously in the East 
End. There is little talking. The resident of Old Kent 
Road or distant Poplar passes silently from one picture to 
another. 

He looks intently, but he does not smile. Art is as 
grim and grave to him as life. What are his thoughts, I 
wonder, when he passes from a French interior by Chardin 
to a Chelsea interior by Mr. William Orpen ; from a 



168 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

dainty open-air Watteau to a blood and powder open-air 
Colenso by Mr. J. P. Beadle ; from a classical landscape by 
Claude to an ultra-modern landscape by Mr. Wilson Steer, 
where everything is subservient to the forlorn hope of 
fixing on canvas the vibrations of light and the vivid 
bewilderment of reflecting surfaces ? What would Claude 
of Lorraine, that wandering Frenchman, a pioneer of land- 
scape, think of the modern development of the art ? When 
he died in 1682, ninety- three years before Turner was born, 
men thought that landscape had reached its zenith — classi- 
cally beautiful as painted by the gentle Claude, classically 
sublime as painted by the egregious Salvator Rosa. 

There were others, the prolific Poussins, Vandevelde, 
who made sea-fights for Charles II., and Cuyp, with his 
cattle and sunny meadows. But Claude was the champion. 
I think Whitechapel likes Claude. A stevedore stood 
beside me before the three Claudes in the lower gallery. 
He looked, shifted his feet, and said, " They're a bit of 
alright, Mister.'" They are, indeed they are. 

Here are the Claude lovely skies, distances and blue lakes, 
set in scenes where there is eternal beauty and peace. The 
properties, without which no landscape in his day was 
considered complete, are, of course, there ; but the ruins, 
the bridges, the drawing-master trees, the stupid figures, 
are not insistent. 

Claude used to say that he made no charge for his 
figures. The stevedore particularly admired A Shepherd 
Playing on His Pipe, containing one figure only, and I 
gathered from his remarks that he liked these three 
Claudes none the less because they were unlike Nature. 
Since Claude's day landscape painting has passed through 



AN OLD MASTER IN WHITECHAPEL 169 

revolutions. Nature has been assailed. Men have pitted 
themselves against the dazzling gold of the sun, against 
the pale silver of moonlight, against the luminous grey of 
noon. We are infinitely cleverer ; we can do a hundred 
things in landscape that the old men never dreamed 
of attempting — Turner''s visions of Venice and his Rain, 
Steam, and Speed ; Corofs pastorals ; Monet's haystacks ; 
Henry Moore"'s seas ; Clausen's light on meadow and in 
barn ; but we have lost something — the large repose and 
solemn grandeur that ennobles most of Claude's four 
hundred pictures. 

Suppose he could revisit the world he loved, take a 'bus 
from the Bank to the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and spend 
a morning among the modern landscapes oji the upper 
floor. What would he say ? 
What would he think of them ? 

Of Mr Steer's brilliant, unbeautiful, and tantalising 
experiment in paint called Landscape with Trees and 
Cows ? It would be as incomprehensible to him as electric 
traction. Moved he would be, I think, by Whistler's 
Nocturne. Strange it might seem, but also strangely 
beautiful. 

When he saw Mr. Hornel's charming figures in Children 
on the Sands, he would gasp and say, " I engaged other 
people to put the figures into my landscapes. Here is a 
man who makes them fresh and beautiful as the flowers on 
the seashore where they play." 

The shocks would be so frequent that Claude would pass 
from canvas to canvas in a state of chronic amazement that 
man should have learnt to see so much more in nature than 
he ever dreamed of — such loveliness as Mr. Julius Olsson's 



170 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

Moonrise and Mr. Adrian Stokes's Moonrise over the 
Dunes. 

But when he came to Mr. Arnesby Brown's subtle twi- 
light, called The Harbour, he would feel the ground firm 
beneath his feet again. 

For before it stood a painter copying the picture. 
Claude could join the crowd, watch the copyist at work, 
peer into his paint-box, study his palette, and forget his 
astonishment in the absorption of seeing How It Is Done. 



"OLD CROME WAS ENGLAND" 

"TTIT'HEN the Norwich School of Painting is mentioned 
' ' the figure of Old Crorae at once uprises with a nim- 
bus of the light, air, and space he loved about his honest 
head. He rises leisurely, for the landscape painters of 1795 
(the middle year of his life) were never in a hurry. John 
was his baptismal name ; but he will be known for ever as 
Old Crome — not in the patriarchal sense, for he was but 
fifty- two when he died. This little man, with the viva- 
cious eye, was called Old Crome to distinguish him from 
his son, young John, and time has given an endearing 
quality to the epithet. If painters wrote causeries they 
would make Old Crome the pet of painting as Lamb is 
of letters. He was a boon companion, but jolly, not 
humorous ; merry in the inn parlour, but firm and stern 
about work. 

He is the star actor on the green sward of the Norwich 
school ; his leading men were Cotman, Stark, and Vincent, 
and about them range a vast company of painters. 



"OLD CROME WAS ENGLAND" 171 

The art-historian must treat the lesser men and the 
camp-followers of a school seriously ; but the vital 
elements, the brain and blood, are the protagonists. Ask 
any man of average knowledge what he knows of the 
Norwich school, and he will utter with an affectionate 
smile the name of Old Crome, adding, perhaps, as he 
recalls certain delightful pictures and Normandy draw- 
ings — " and Cotman, wasn''t he a member ? " John Sell 
Cotman is poorly represented in the National Gallery ; 
but the Old Crome feast is a rare one. The room where 
his two large canvases hang is all aglow with the light 
that shines from his Mousehold Heath, with the iridescent 
clouds piling up across the sky, and the golden glamour 
of the firmament above his Windmill. I could do without 
the miller on a pony and the two donkeys ; but Crome, 
when he gave us those great skies, could not wholly sever 
himself from the traditional bugaboo of " human interest." 
Nature, not man, was his first and last love. In A View 
at Chapel Fields, Norwich, he is still trying to work in 
the manner of his adored master, Hobbema, who saw the 
cool, grey Dutch day oftener than the sunshine ; but it was 
when Crome forgot even Hobbema, and strolling about the 
Norfolk levels, looked at sky, heath, and the flights of 
birds in the distance, absorbed them, and transferred air, 
space, and light to his rough canvases, that he became, 
after Turner and Constable, one of the pioneers of English 
landscape art. 

The aim and practice of the Norwich school, with Crome 
at their head, was the return to Nature, that recurrent 
pilgrimage from academics and traditions that is ever re- 
vivifying art. Old Crome put Salvator Rosa and Poussin 



172 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

behind him, drew on his stout boots, sniffed the air like a 
war-horse, trudged over Norfolk, and bade his pupils do 
likewise. He was not, like Turner, a sun worshipper. He 
did not dare all ; he did not drench his canvases in sunlight 
as Turner did in those wonderful pictures that have been 
recovered from the National Gallery cellars. Crome 
painted the glow of the sun on heath and hill, and the 
pattern of the warm rays falling through trees on wood- 
land paths. Sobriety and dignity were his notes. Division 
of colours, spot, dash and blob tricks were as alien to him 
as manufactured tubes of paint. He ground his own 
colours, and knew just what each was worth. A John- 
Bullish, sound, slow-moving mind, he took the Wilson 
fever ; but he never caught the Turner infection. 

He was a man of the soil — that soil of East Anglia that 
produced Constable and Gainsborough. When we think 
of the great landscape painters who sprang from the 
" Folk Lands of Norfolk and Suffolk, "" and drew their in- 
spiration from the large skies and distances, we are again 
reminded how local a thing painting is, and always has 
been. Landscape art has boundaries ; it is bounded by 
the limits of the district a painter feels, and feeling, inter- 
prets. When Crome had swung into his stride the work 
of other painters, living or dead, was nothing to him. 
The Norwich men would never have emerged from obscurity 
had they worked after the formula of Sir George Beau- 
mont, who surrounded himself with Claudes, Poussins, and 
Wilsons, and painted his own picture with a pictinre by one 
of those masters on an easel by his side. Old Crome is 
great because he was a stay-at-home ; because he studied 
Nature, not Art ; because, like Millet, he was strong, 



"OLD CROME WAS ENGLAND'' 173 

large and elemental, and because he had mastered his 
craft. 

He painted his Mousehold Heath for his own pleasure, 
" for air and space," and it was sold after his death for 
one guinea. The canvas was then in two pieces, and the 
purchaser used one of the halves as a screen. The j oin 
may still be seen. But Old Crome had a considerable 
measure of esteem during his lifetime. His steady climb 
to fame after his death was augmented by the splendid 
panegyric of a fellow East Anglian, George Borrow. 
Many owe their first introduction to Old Crome to the 
famous passage in " Lavengro." Borrow's brother, having 
determined to become a painter, proposed to visit Rome 
and study " the grand miracle " of art — Raphael's 
Transfiguration. Then the eyes of the author of 
" Lavengro " blazed, and he rolled out this counsel to his 
affrighted kinsman : 

" Better stay at home, brother, at least for a season, and 
toil and strive 'midst groanings and despondency till thou 
hast attained excellence even as he has done — the little 
dark man with the brown coat and the top-boots, whose 
name will one day be considered the chief ornament of the 
old town, and whose works will at no distant period rank 
among the proudest pictures of England — and England 
against the world ! — thy master, my brother, thy at present 
all too little considered master — Crome." 

Old Crome was England. Turner was a cosmopolitan, 
a restless soaring spirit content with nothing but the beauty 
of the universe ; but Old Crome desired only the homelands, 
long distances, airy and sunlighted, windy heaths rolling 



174 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

meadows, fat uplands, brooks and woods — England. 
Borrow diagnosed him exactly. The English traits were 
his ; the love of walking ; hours of solid work, and relaxa- 
tion at night with boon companions in an inn parlour. 
He taught drawing for a living, and he painted pictures 
and made etchings because there was nothing he liked 
better. Akin to the Dutch landscape painters, and the 
Barbizon men, he would have loathed the brilliant per- 
formances of decadent French draughtsmen of our day. 
Before a Beardsley drawing words would have failed him, 
and he would have slept peacefully through a Bernard 
Shaw play. 

The end of this fine old English gentleman, whose father 
was a travelling weaver and kept a small public-house, 
who began life as a doctor''s boy and was then apprenticed 
to a house-painter, was as fine as any in history. Every- 
one knows his parting words to his son — 

" John, my boy, paint ; but paint for fame ; and if your 
subject is only a pig-sty — dignify it ! " 

Later, when almost unconscious, he made movements with 
his hands as if painting, and said — " There — there — there's 
a touch — that will do — now another — that's it. Beautiful ! " 

His last recorded words were : " Oh, Hobbema ! My 
dear Hobbema ! How I have loved you ! " Then he died. 



A GREAT SEA PAINTER 

XTENRY MOORE died foiuteen years ago, and when he 

died there died the greatest painter of the sea that 

our Island race, or any other race, has produced. I do not 



A GREAT SEA PAINTER 175 

write in haste. I have not forgotten Turner, who used the 
sea in his tremendous way as a setting for his splendid 
dreams ; but Henry Moore painted the sea for its own sake. 
He honoured Poseidon as the Athenians honoured Athena. 
When he had passed through his landscape period, the sea 
was his sole obsession. He gave himself up to it;' he 
studied, without ceasing, the rhythm of the waves, the 
influences of wind and tide, the vast waters, their salty 
freshness and their unresting movement. 

His predecessors, following a popular view, still current, 
that no sea piece is complete without a snatch of " human 
interest,'^ gave to Poseidon their second thoughts. To 
Moore he was all in all. A faint, white sail on the 
horizon or the trail of a steamer's smoke in the distance 
was sufficient human interest for him. He allows himself 
two dim vessels in that beautiful work called Summer 
Breeze in the Channel, now in the Diploma Gallery ; he 
introduced two brown-sailed fishing boats, and tower- 
ing cliffs, in his Cats-paws off the Land, in the Tate 
Gallery, but he painted those boats because they were 
inevitable ; they passed before his eyes : he saw them 
seeking the catspaws of wind that day when he was 
cruising off the Cornish coast. He introduced no silly 
shipwreck into his magnificent Winter Gale in the 
Channel. 

Moore painted the sea so superbly because he gave to it 
a life-long study. He brought to that study science and 
temperament and a love of the ocean keen as Edison's 
passion for mechanics ; he learnt how to draw and to sug- 
gest waves, the roll of breakers, the lash of foam, and the 
strange sluggish under-movement of the ocean itself, with 



176 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

the accuracy and precision that a man acquires from 
drawing the human figure ; he synthesised that know- 
ledge, and his temperament gave to the representation — 
h'fe. He worked quickly ; but he never left a picture 
until he knew that he could add nothing to its quality, 
texture, reflected light, or shadow. 

He thougjit things out. 

What wisdom there is in the following fragment of a 
lecture which he never delivered : 

" Drawing is the beginning of everything. It is almost 
like the discovery of a new sense, and from the time we 
begin to draw objects we begin to discover their beauties ; 
for we never draw without comparing, and the comparing of 
one thing with another is the beginning of the foundation 
of taste or judgment." 

His art life must have been a singularly happy one, for 
it was spent in doing the thing he loved best — with suc- 
cess. Disappointments, of course, he had. One was when 
the hanging committee placed his Rough Weather in the 
Mediterranean above a doorway. Just before sending-in 
day an incident happened in connection with this picture 
that illustrates Leighton's artistic discernment as well as 
Moore's truthfulness of vision. When Leighton, who was 
not aware that Moore had made a trip to Egypt, saw this 
picture in the artisfs studio, he said, " Why, youVe been 
to the Mediterranean." On being asked how he knew, he 
at once answered, " By the curious milky blue of the water ; 
one can never mistake it." 

A happy moment in Moore's life was when his Clearness 
After Rain and Newhaven Packet gained for him the Grand 



A GREAT SEA PAINTER 177 

Prix and the Legion of Honour at the Paris Exposition 
Universelle of 1889, a distinction that had been preceded 
by the delight of the French critics in " la note bleu de 
Moore "" ; another was when he received a four-page com- 
munication from Meissonier inviting him to consider him- 
self Societaire of the Societe des Artistes Fran^ais. His 
fellow artists recognised Henry Moore''s genius, and all who 
saw the collection of his work at the Old Masters' Exhibi- 
tion after his death realised that a great painter of the sea 
had passed away. 

Another happy moment in his life was, I think, that 
day in the year 1873, when he stepped aboard the yacht 
Dawn, and first began to paint the ocean on the ocean. 
It is curious to trace the fascination that the sea had for 
him — the lure and the call of it to his temperament. Once 
it conquered him, and for a time fear took the place of 
love. He found, to his dismay, after being afloat for 
some weeks, that, when he landed, the concentration in 
painting moving water from a moving vessel made objects 
on land appear to be in movement also. He could not 
focus. A short rest made trees, farms, and cornfields 
stable again. 

This strange call of the sea, as of soul to soul, is illus- 
trated by a passage in his own writing. 

" I well remember one wretched day — a gale blowing, 
the rain a deluge, and I far from the sea. I paced up and 
down all day like a caged beast, and at last took Bradshaw, 
and noting the nearest point at which the line reached the 
sea, fixed upon Seascale, and started about five on a dark 
November night." 

M 



178 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

There is a poem in that line : " And I far from the 
sea." 

Those who had not tried to paint the sea may realise 
by the following extract from his diary how Henry Moore 
learnt to paint it : 

" I noticed that the breaking foam coming between me 
and the west was darker than the trough of the waves, 
which reflected the green and gold of the sky ; also that the 
spray flying up from a rock was purple and gold, one part 
being dark off the sky behind, with flecks and patches of 
gold . . . reflected or transmitted light when it came off" 
the sea." 

Henry Moore died at the age of sixty-four. The street 
accident that disabled him in 1891 was probably the begin- 
ning of the end. His fine Diploma picture was painted the 
year before his death, and the final work of his hands was 
upon the canvas of a student. A girl who was painting 
upon the beach at Broadstairs was in trouble with her sky. 
Moore first gave her advice, then took the brushes and 
showed how it should be done. That was his last piece 
of work. 

Like Velasquez, Moore painted what his eyes saw after 
selection. He did not invent. He just painted the sea, 
the sky, light and the wind, and theharmony of their inter- 
action upon each other. The grand manner was as anti- 
pathetic to him as it is to Monet. He was a pioneer who 
trod again the old road of a return to nature and sim- 
plicity : a pioneer because he had the insight to know that 
the sea should be the essence of a picture, not art 
addition. 



JULY 



JULY 



IMPRESSIONS OF TRAVEL 
THE FOG 

T AWOKE suddenly. It was full daylight. My watch 
indicated four in the morning. We should be near- 
ing the Dutch coast. But why had the boat stopped ? 
Why had the devastating scrunch of the screw ceased ? I 
clambered from my berth and withdrew the curtain from 
the porthole. Sea and sky had gone. We were enveloped 
in a dense fog. Then the boat moved forward at quarter 
speed, and at intervals the syren wailed to a vanished 
world. 

The wail of the syren roused the passengers. A fog at 
sea unstrings the nerves of the timid and discountenances 
the brave. I noticed that the landing platform had been 
extended, and that two life-lines were coiled upon it. On 
the bridge were five men. The captain stood in the 
centre with two of his subordinates on either side. They 
leaned over the rail peering into the wall of fog. I went 
forward. Three of the crew were bent double over the 
bows seeking the black mass that might be moving 
towards us. I could almost fancy I heard the crash, the 
shouts, and the rush of feet. 

The air was dank. I went below. A dozen passengers 
were gathered around the breakfast table, sipping tea and 
toying with toast. When the syren wailed, my neighbour, 



182 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

a girl, who was about to eat a mouthful, replaced the 
crust upon the table and folded her hands. A woman 
cried silently. A large, flabby man took the seat adjoin- 
ing mine, rested his elbow upon the table, and covered his 
eyes. I thought he was praying ; but when the steward 
advanced and stood inquiringly before him he raised his 
head for a moment and said, " Ham and eggs."" 

Those homely words relieved our depression. Also the 
vessel began to move faster. Soon the syren ceased, and 
when the captain slouched into the cabin and called for a 
cup of hot coffee, we — well, I think some of us could have 
danced a jig. 

I went on deck. 

There was Holland : the sun was scattering the fog ; 
we passed the place where the Berlin was wrecked. Pooh ! 
Who thinks of fear on the morning after, with all the 
adventures of a new day waiting ? 

THE LAUNCH 

At Amsterdam I left the train, and boarded a boat 
bound for the Helder, the northernmost point of North 
Holland, where the low-lying islands curve round to the 
horizon, looking as if they had been appointed ocean out- 
posts to Friesland. The voyage might take a day, but 
what of that ? There is only one way to travel in Holland 
— by water. The boat glides through the brimming 
canal, passes the clean towns and the many windmills. 
Life persists ; passengers and cargoes come and go, but 
you are no longer at war with the world or in trouble 
with it. You are a spectator, idling through a summer 
day, wrapped in aloofness, content merely to be moving 



IMPRESSIONS OP TRAVEL 183 

through the moist and luminous air. When the environs 
of Amsterdam are left behind, and the waterside houses 
give place to the reeds that bend as the backwash over- 
takes them, and the factories merge into vast, bright 
meadows, the spirit of this land wrested from the sea 
hypnotises the traveller. I forgot to count the windmills, 
was indifferent to the locality of the hut where Peter the 
Great studied shipbuilding, listened without emotion to 
the story of Alkmaar's triumphs, and was content with 
pretending to choose a habitation from among the pic- 
turesque houses whose gardens are washed by the waters 
of this great North Canal. 

We passed through Alkraaar. Beyond, on one side 
are Dutch farmhouses, pyramidical, four-square, stretching 
endlessly along the waterway ; on the other side the 
meadows, and far away, the sweeping line of the dunes. 
They rise above the North Sea, and on their sandy sides 
and heights men are for ever on the watch against the en- 
croachments of the ocean; they plant the shrub called 
helm, that binds the sand together, making a bulwark 
against the rage of the waves. " God made the sea, man 
made the land,'"' says the Dutchman. These flower- 
fruitful and pastoral meadows that outstretched as we 
glided northward were once submerged in water. Through 
these smiling pastures the Rhine, overflowing into a 
broad estuary, felt its way sluggishly toward the Helder ; 
but long ago the Dutchmen forced the river to seek the 
ocean by Katwij k, far south. All North Holland is now 
reclaimed, and some day, I am told, the waters of the 
Zuider Zee will be driven back to the ocean. 

The fight against the sea never ceases. As we moved 



184. THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

northward the three great dykes loomed out. The outer- 
most — a mighty fortification against nature — is called the 
Waker, the one farthest inland is named the Sleeper, and 
between the two is the Dreamer. I gazed out at these 
high bulwarks, patrolled and watched by day and by night, 
and mused on the story of Little Peter, and the legend 
that at Amsterdam there is one master key, a turn of 
which, in times of peril from foreign invasion, will drown 
the land again. 

And as I mused there swept past a barge. The great 
sail was hoisted. The family — a mite of the fifty 
thousand canal population who live out their lives on 
these floating houses — were gathered round the tiller, 
where the father smoked and steered. A barge — the 
symbol of this sea-conquering people. 

Below the Helder I landed. Beyond is the fort with 
the fringe of islands outposting Friesland, the fishing 
fleet and the gunboats, and the channel between the 
mainland and Texel opening to the world. As I crossed 
the bridge I saw the sight of sights. There was no fuss, 
no shouting, no spilling of wine at that launch. The 
barge moved from her cradle, shot downwards, took the 
water in a rush, pretended to capsize, and all at once 
acquiesced. She had found her master. 

THE KID 

That barge meeting the sea so gleefully, spurning it, 
frolicking, then nestling upon the bosom of her life-long 
companion, is the symbol of the waterways of Holland. 
But the meadows that stretch away to the horizon have 
for me quite a different symbol — a kid, with brown eyes 



IMPRESSIONS OF TRAVEL 185 

and a brown and white coat, tethered to a stake by a 
ten-foot rope, a foolish friendly little goat, so young, so 
curious, so interested in the world that he forgets to be 
harassed by his chain. 

He alone of all the creatures of the sunlighted meadows 
has personality. He alone seems to welcome intercourse 
with men. The droves of black kine roaming between the 
dykes, the sheep and horses, the blue-bloused milkmen, 
the millers who stand for a moment in the doorways of 
their mills, the panting dogs drawing the little carts — 
these are all engrossed in their avocations, but the little 
goat with the brown eyes has leisure to fraternise with 
man. 

His home is on a grass plot in front of a Dutch farm- 
house bordering upon the narrow paved road that winds 
the landward side of the dunes — those desolate dunes — 
peopled with wild-flowers. How well I know the way to 
his home. I approach. He tugs at his rope, his foolish httle 
legs beat the air, he entices me to draw near. Your 
manner is cordial, my little friend, but you do not deceive 
me ! Once, was it yesterday or a year ago, I carried a bunch 
of honeysuckle in my button-hole. When, inveigled by 
your coaxing ways, I knelt to pat your brown head, you 
gobbled up the honeysuckle, leaves and all, until not a 
bit of my button-hole was left. So it has been ever since. 
I approach you with a bouquet in my button-hole. I 
leave you munching, wistful and still hungry. Would 
that a diet of honeysuckle could keep you always a pretty, 
playful kid. But you will grow into an ugly goat. Then 
I shall know you no more. 

But when I climb the highest of the dunes and survey 



186 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

the level country with its brilliant splashes of flower 
meadows, its windmills, and roaming black cattle, my 
eyes will seek the grass plot in front of a certain farm- 
house where, in your childhood, you gobbled honeysuckle, 
and pretended that you were the Friend of Man. 



RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES 
HAPPINESS 

"DEING Saturday morning, throughout Holland the 
"^ clean fronts of the Dutch houses were undergoing 
their weekly washing. I lingered in the shade of the trees 
that border the road, and watched the Serving Maid, 
whose father is a Dutch barge-builder, scouring the fa9ade 
of the inn with broom, pail, and hose. As she swirled the 
water she sang. She always sang through her work, and 
the words were English ; for although this inn was in re- 
moter Holland, and " Koffijhuis-Biljart" was painted over 
the door, it was frequented by the English colony, and the 
Serving Maid was familiar with England and America. 
She was one of those rare creatures for whom the present 
hour suffices ; she caught joy from the avocation of the 
moment ; she was always cheerful, ever eager to be of 
service, meeting each new day with serenity and clear aims, 
and smiling and singing through the routine of her tasks. 
Her songs were all drawn from one source. A kindly 
American visitor had affixed a calendar to the white wall 
of the sanded guest-room, a Flower calendar, with a verse 
or thought about flowers, flocks, or pastoral toil accom- 
panying the days of the year — a pretty notion, for 



RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES 187 

Holland is the land of flowers and pastures. Yesterday's 
quotation was from Herbert : 

" Farewell, dear flowers ; sweetly your time ye spent. 
Fit while ye lived for smell or ornament. 

And after death for cures. 
I follow straight, without complaints or gtief 
Since if my scent he good, I care not if 

It he as short as yours.'''' 

To-day's quotation is from Elizabeth Barrett Browning : 

" / will have hopes that cannot fade. 

For flowers the valley yields ; 
I will have humble thoughts instead 

Of silent, dewy fields ; 
My spirit and my God shall be 

My seaward hill, my boundless sea."" 

As the maid sang, her father, the barge-builder, passed 
down the road carrying a plank. He paused and smiled. 
Only four words passed between them ; he but said in 
Dutch " To-night at eight," yet it seemed as if an intimate 
and comforting communication had been signalled from 
father to daughter. He passed on thoughtful and happy, 
anticipating the Spiritualist meeting to be held that night 
at eight in a cottage by the dunes — ^just a few gathered 
together and content, because, understanding, they wait 
hopefully, knowing that all is well. Why not ? Did not 
V irgil say (there it is under January 1 in the Calendar) 
" They find it possible because they think it possible. 
... If hard the toil this season, the next it will be 
light." 



188 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

The Serving Maid, having re-cleaned the clean front of 
the inn, went indoors to other blithe tasks, and I, still 
lingering in the shade of the trees, recalled two other 
spectacles of religious experiences that, a few days before, I 
had witnessed with wonderment. One was at Chartres, 
the other at the church of Notre Dame du Sablon in 
Brussels. 

PILGRIMS 

Grey Chartres Cathedral, so wise^ so old, watched from 
her hill the momentary life of modern Chartres, where the 
usual fair was blaring around the usual steam roundabout. 
I walked through the din, sought the west door, and found 
it locked, which was strange ; but the north porch entrance 
was unbarred. It opened to the gloom of the vast interior, 
palely illuminated by the splendour of the purple and blue 
windows. I saw the columns towering into obscurity, saw 
a few figures tiptoe down the flags, and heard a low mur- 
mur as of a great multitude gathered together, but where ? 
Around the doorway a few shapes flitted ; but all else was 
incoherent. I walked towards the nave, and was suddenly 
aware that thousands were wedged between the chancel 
steps and the closed west door. Suddenly the throng 
parted, and down the centre of the aisle a burnished cross 
swung high in the gloom, carried by a priest, and on either 
side of him walked two other priests bearing lighted candles. 
They moved slowly towards the crypt steps, and, as they 
passed, the pilgrims pressed forward to join the procession 
with the biurnished cross high above. So they swayed 
singing downward to the crypt. Each pilgrim carried a 
candle, and each man, woman, and child shouted, as they 



RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES 189 

pressed onward, " Le Poeme de Notre Dame de Chartres." 
It has fifty-four verses. 

Hours seemed to pass while that procession paced 
through the interminable length of the crypt, and up again 
into the dim emptying cathedral. In the middle of the 
nave, and dividing the mass of pilgrims as they crept 
through the crypt, which was fogged with the smoke of 
thousands of candles, stood priests, a few yards separating 
each. They never ceased to sing, and when the pilgrims 
faltered through sheer exhaustion of the vocal chords, the 
priests sang louder. 

Waves of emotion convulsed the multitude. The myriad 
little flames of the candles dazzled ; the din deafened. I 
ascended to the cathedral, blinking, breathless, bewildered, 
but sure that here at Chartres France has not lost her faith. 
The pilgrims, who had given a working day to Notre 
Dame de Chartres, were streaming through the open doors 
and setting forth on their long journeys homeward. 

That hubbub of religious fervour returned, became in- 
sistent, as I lounged in the shade of the trees in quiet 
Holland ; then the cacophonies of Chartres ceased and 
silence fell. 

CONSOLATION 

I saw a Solitary. It was in Notre Dame du Sablon in 
Brussels, at twilight after a wet day. The church was 
empty and very still. I moved towards a side chapel, 
where one candle gleamed before a Pieta. Carved in front 
of the suffering figures were these words, " O vous tous qui 
passez considerez et voyez s'il est une douleur comparable 
a ma, douleur.'''' That pitiful communication seemed to 



190 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

become articulate in the silence and the mystery of the 
hour. I looked deeper into the darkness. I withdrew. 
In the shadow knelt a woman in weeds, sobbing. 

4: 4( H: 4: 4: 

As I lingered one evening in the shade of the trees in 
Holland, watching a stork meditating a downward swoop 
from his nest, the barge-builder and his daughter came 
down the road hand in hand. I saw contentment in their 
eyes, and spiritual luminosity in their faces, as if the flesh 
was rarefied by some interior illuminant. The barge- 
builder was silent. The Serving Maid, gazing out to the 
line of sea-dunes fading against the sky, was singing 

^^ My spirit and my God shall be 
My seaward hill, my boundless sea^ 
I watched them enter the door of the farm-house where 
the weekly meeting of Spiritualists is held. 

Each of these, how strange it is ! — the multitude at 
Chartres, the widow at Brussels, the Dutch barge-builder 
and his daughter — have answered in their own way the 
questions propounded by Shakespeare through the mouth 
of Sir Toby Belch : " Wherefore are these things hid ? 
Wherefore have these gifts a curtain before them .? " 

They have lifted the curtain and they have found the 
gifts. 



THE CREATURE IN THE COTTAGE 

XTTTHEN in a single season two pictures of the Landscape 

Land were medalled at Paris, and another was bought 

from the line at Munich, (juite ^ number of lesser men 



THE CREATURE IN THE COTTAGE 191 

hurried to the locality. This exceedingly fair country, they 
said, is much in favour with the juries of painting. We, 
too, will go thither and win medals like John Bull and his 
cousin. So it came to pass that many strange dialects were 
heard at evening-time in the lone hotel that stares out at 
the North Sea, and the Dutch fisher children spent many 
curious happy hours watching ill-dressed little foreign 
gentlemen striving with their art on the beach or in the 
hot dunes. They niggled in the most approved fashion ; 
and nightfall sent them home to the windy hotel, with 
their pictures changed, but seldom advanced. When, in 
the course of many seasons, recognition fell not to their 
share, they decided that the Landscape Land no longer 
bewitched the juries. Then, with heavy hearts, they 
returned to their high stools in Continental galleries and 
set to recopying the Old Masters. 

All but one. He, a Swede of hysterical temperament 
— pasty, slack, cursed with extraordinary perseverance — 
was constitutionally incapable of perceiving his limitations. 
He had failed at painting the sea, he had failed at flowers ; 
cows in orchards had evaded him ; the world looked upon 
his idea of the sun falling upon distant haycocks and saw 
that it was black. On the top of all these failures he still, 
like Braddock, promised himself to do better the next time. 
Day and night he dreamed of fame, and the very morn- 
ing after his latest failure he awoke with a gay determina- 
tion to win a medal with a picture of a windmill stand- 
ing sentinel over a field of flowers. He went forth 
accompanied by a companionable mongrel dog that loved 
him, till he came to a place where stood a windmill by the 
side of ft brimming ditch. A tanned, wi'inkled-faced Dutch 



192 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

woman, with beady eyes, and a crochet cap tied over her 
thin hair, was seated by the ditch reading in a book. Of 
her the Swede, with a low bow, begged permission to fix 
his easel in the garden, that he might make a picture of 
the flowers and the sentinel windmill. The woman laid 
the book on her black apron, stared, nodded, and was about 
to resume reading when the mongrel that had been skulk- 
ing at the Swede's heels lifted its head and whined. When 
the beast whined the woman shivered like a person with ague. 
" Take it out of my sight ! " she cried, almost choking with 
the violence of her utterance. As the words left her lips 
an echoing whine came from the cottage ; which surprised 
the Swede, as dog owners are not usually timid of other 
people's beasts. 

He tied the animal to a tree that bent over the road 
outside, arranged his easel, and began to draw in the mill 
on a canvas about the size of a chess-board. All around 
him were flowers ; but until the mill was carefully drawn 
he heeded them no more than he was heeded by the 
wrinkled woman who had shuffled down to the water-side, 
there to fill, empty, and refill a child's tin mug, old and 
battered. She sighed and shook her head as the drops 
splashed into the ditch. When the outline of the mill was 
indicated, the Swede retired a few feet, to find himself 
ill-pleased with the work. The position of the wings was 
ineffective ; so he glanced towards the old woman, prepared 
to offer her a gulden for the trouble of turning them to a 
more pictorial angle. She was no longer sitting on the 
stool, and as he had not the ingenuity to distinguish the 
old body bent over the water, he picked his way carefully 
through the flowers to the cottage door, pushed it open, 



THE CREATURE IN THE COTTAGE 193 

and stepped inside with the request framed on his 
lips. 

The man's cry awoke the mongrel, who had fallen asleep 
with his nose on the paved road. He leaped into the 
garden and licked his master's hand, the only part of the 
Swede's body visible, a poor trembling hand clutching the 
door open. At the touch of the dog's tongue he screamed 
again, and tottered across the threshold into the sunlight, 
where for some seconds he leaned against the mill in the 
attitude of an ill man. Recovering, he crushed across the 
flowers, gathered easel and canvas to his arms, and made off 
over the land followed by the amazed mongrel. As the 
tails of his flying coat whisked past the gate, a brown 
wrinkled face raised itself from the water, and a squat 
figure shuffled round to the cottage door. She closed it 
gently behind her, and from the room there came cooings 
of comfort, moans, and other sad sounds as of a dumb child 
trying to speak. The sun had sunk behind the dunes before 
she reappeared. It was strange that the tender light of 
early evening should daze her ; but, by comparison, the glow 
was dazzling as the noonday sun, for within that room she 
moved and did the work of nursing — so far as was possible 
— with closed eyes. There was a time, years ago when 
Hope encouraged her now and again to look at the thing 
lying there ; but that trial had long become too painful. 

She returned to the stool by the water-side, her thin lips 
muttering a sentence from her favourite author, " Why is 
light still given to me whose wayi is hid, and whom God 
hath hedged in ? " Then, with a sudden irritability, she 
kicked the book away, and kneeling again, filled the tin 
mug, gazing into the clear water, her mind at that moment 



19i THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

flashing back into the past — back through thirty and more 
years. 

4c 4c 4: * * 

The season was the same ; the landscape was unchanged, 
save that the branches rustling above the flowers were 
thinner and the trunks slimmer. Then, as now, somebody 
sat by the water-side sewing — a girl, waistless as Dutch 
peasant maidens should be ; but with clear eyes and a 
complexion such as only Dutch maidens have. The face 
was seldom without a smile ; it was never without a smile 
when the eyes rested on a child playing in the tall grass 
just beyond the ditch. Nearer the cottage the father, in 
a blue blouse, wide blue trousers, and sabots, was swirling 
water over the Jclinkers, polishing them with a broom, 
and singing as he worked. Each time he clattered to the 
ditch to fill the pail he kissed his wife on the neck or on 
the hair. With her, merely to live was to be perfectly 
happy ; when the child crossed the bridge, lisping that he 
was thirsty, it was added pleasure to the woman to enter 
the dairy and dip a cup into one of the large pails of milk. 
Carrying it dripping from the dim cool room, she suddenly 
started, dropped the cup, frightened by a prolonged, horrible 
noise — the mingled cries of a man and a child in pain. 
Dragging the curtain from the window, she saw her husband 
falling backwards, with a dog leaping at his throat, and the 
child trying to hide its small blanched face in the rough 
planks of the windmill. Then the report of a gun rang 
out, and a bullet pinged through the mad dog's brain. It 
fell to the ground, and the boer who had fired rushed to 
the spot, and swung down the butt of his gun on the 
beast's disfigured head. The bullet had already done the 



THE CREATURE IN THE COITAGE 195 

work ; but not before the teeth had met deep in the man's 
cheek. He died a month later. The child was unharmed ; 
but the horror of the sight cut into its awakening sensi- 
bilities, deadening them for ever. Unhappily its physical 
development was not retarded, but diverted from the 
normal to the monstrous. Carried to a bed, there it had 
lain and grown for thirty -three years, an unsightly creature, 
so pitiable an object that she who had borne it shut its 
presence from her eyes. 

***** 
Laughter and a snatch of song roused the old woman's 
day-long reverie. She slowly emptied the mug, and rais- 
ing her head blinked at the landscape. Along the cut 
grass neighbours were passing, laughing, singing, as they 
tripped to the black kine waiting to be milked in the far 
corner of the field. The eyes of the wife were alight with 
mirth at some small jest of her husband's ; the elder son 
held his father's hand, the elder girl her mother's, while the 
younger children plucked the flowers, and made excursions 
in search of " tremble grass." They passed : it was 
the hour of infinite peace ; the old woman was alone with 
her bitter thoughts. Only when a particularly hearty 
peal of laughter broke back to her through the hushed 
air, she rose angrily to her feet, resentful of such happi- 
ness. But the mood passed quickly as it came. She 
collected her little properties, shaking her old head towards 
the room where the thing lay, and muttering mechanically 
as if persistent iteration of the words had made them 
meaningless — " Why, O God, why ? " 



196 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 



ENTERING LONDON 

XT was a July night in a garden on the northern border 
of Berkshire, and the flowers were losing their colour 
in the gathering darkness. But the motor-car looming 
behind the outer fence reminded me that London called. 
There was some delay. The chauffeur, an alert, peakish 
youth of eighteen, was in trouble with the great acetylene 
lamp ; while he wrestled with it, to escape from the 
noxious odour of the gas, I strolled into the house and 
turned the leaves of books. A mistress who loved flowers, 
and tended them so delicately, would be trained to right 
reading. Yes ! The volumes included " Critical Studies 
and Fragments,"" by the late Arthur Strong ; " Giovanni 
Bellini," by Roger Fry ; " The Wind Among the Reeds," 
by W. B. Yeats ; and the " Life and Letters of the late 
Bishop of London," by Mrs. Creighton. I opened the 
latter at random, and taking the book to the lamp, read 
this sentence : " To me the one supreme object of life is, 
and always has been, to draw near to God." 

A tap upon the window arrested me ; I saw the eager, 
beckoning face of the chauffeur, his slim figure dark against 
the white blaze of the lamp, making the lane, that twisted 
through the fragrant country to the distant London road, 
brighter than day. 

The automobile groaned, started, found her pace and 
leapt forward, tearing through the spreading dazzle of 
light as if she were mad to overtake it. Lovers, strolling 
through the lanes, suddenly found, for one awful instant, 
their intimacies blazoned to alien eyes. In the fields 



ENTERING LONDON 197 

animals stampeded ; the air rushed by, and all the while 
there drummed in my head that recorded desire of Mandell 
Creighton''s. How strange, how revolutionary, I thought, 
if all the world believed it, and followed the gleam. How 
simple life would become. 

I glanced sideways at the chauffeur, the new type of man 
that the automobile has evolved — thin, keen, grimy, fear- 
less ! How many generations, how many aeons would be 
needed to persuade him that the supreme object of life is 
not " pace," but to draw near to God ? 

I did not pursue the question. A night ride in a motor- 
car is not the occasion. The sudden cocking of the 
chaufFeur"'s head caused me to turn and glance behind. 
There was nothing to be seen but a large, bright lamp 
rushing towards us, nothing to be heard but the whirr of 
a motor-car advancing at a terrific pace. It flashed past, 
showing a man crouched in a long slate-coloured car, every 
faculty of his being concentrated in his starting, staring 
eyes. " That's a racer," said the chauffeur in an awed 
whisper. " Hell get stopped, you see." 

So it fell out. The church clock was striking half-past 
ten as we entered the outskirts of a minor Thames village 
and swept down the empty street. In the narrowest part 
a small crowd had gathered around the driver of the racing- 
car, who was tendering his name and address to a police- 
man. " Told you so ! " said the chauffeur, as he put on the 
brake. 

" Continue the journey," said I. 

Quarter of an hour later the racer whizzed past us again. 
" Hell get caught a second time," said the chauffeur. 

Probably the law-breaker escaped, as, on the decline of a 



198 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

long, easy hill, a man sprang out of the darkness into the 
road and waved his handkerchief. The chauffeur eased 
down, and the unknown shouted, " Police trap quarter of 
a mile ahead ! " " There's something wrong here," said I, 
but the chauffeur only grinned. Sure enough, quarter of 
a mile ahead lurked a police trap in the persons of two 
top-booted constables hiding with bicycles behind a hay- 
stack. The youthful chauffeur, who was driving at the 
rate of about two miles an hour as we passed the haystack, 
saluted, and said to the rural policemen with a pleasant 
inflection in his voice, " Looks as if there'll be a nice drop 
of rain afore morning ! " 

There were few people about when we turned into the 
London main road ; but for an interminable way our route 
was impeded by the huge, brilliantly-lighted electric trams, 
that glided past to and fro in rapid procession, linking the 
outlying suburbs with the environs of London. Petrol and 
electricity, the new forces, newly harnessed, and this new 
man, the alert, peakish chauffeur, eighteen years of age, 
blinking at the rival lights ! A phase of London ! 

I descended when we reached Westminster Abbey. 
And in the shadow of that fane, the motor-car dismissed, I 
recalled those haunting words, " To me the one supreme 
object of life is, and always has been, to draw near to 
God." 

And I wondered as I walked home. 



INGRES, REMBRANDT AND A MODERN 199 



INGRES, REMBRANDT AND 
A MODERN 

rpHE chances of publishing brought to my door, in the 
same moment, two illustrated books, each nearly a 
foot and a half high and a foot wide, each profusely illus- 
trated, each containing a critical essay by a distinguished 
Frenchman. The subject of one book is Ingres, the cold 
and formal French artist, who has been dead thirty-nine 
years ; the subject of the other is Mr. Frank Brangwyn, the 
youngest Associate of the Royal Academy, whose art has 
the impetuosity of a Vanguard motor-omnibus running 
through the orange groves of Seville. 

Could there be a greater contrast in pictorial art than 
Ingres and Brangwyn ? Civilisation and barbarism, a 
Cranford tea-party and a bull-fight, the cold elegance of 
classical formalism and the riot of oriental romanticism. 
Yet each may be lauded, for each expresses a personality 
with sincerity. 

Ingres was a great draughtsman, not such a draughts- 
man as Degas, whose nervous, living line startles us 
into admiration, but of the school of the accomplished 
Raphael. 

The eye of Ingres just held as much colour as a mariner 
sees on a grey day in the English Channel. Brangwyn is 
a colourist, loving colour like Delacroix, seeing it in opulent 
masses. He is a colourist, even in black-and-white. I 
feel the colour in his etching of Assisi, and in the light sky 
hovering above the towering etching of his Building" of the 
New South Kensington Museum. 



200 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

Ingres seems to have won his way to his style by a 
laborious study of good models. His working hours, I feel, 
were spent in galleries and in his studio. Life was eddy- 
ing and surging around him, crying for his attention, but 
he shrank from it, preferring to study the gods of other 
days, the works of painters whom tradition has authorised. 
Brangwyn is bustling about in the thick of life, seeing 
with his own eyes, glorying in the vision, singing and laugh- 
ing as he splashes colour, not caring a button, so long as 
he is free to wander, to observe and to work, whether the 
painters who preceded Raphael were better or worse than 
those who followed him, and never, I am sure, asking him- 
self whether he is a Classicist or a Romanticist. 

Every student knows that in Paris, in the year 1824, 
Ingres was the recognised leader of the Classicists against 
the Romanticists. Every tourist to the Louvre pauses 
before his nude, blonde maiden called La Source, kindling 
or chilling according to his temperament. The drawing of 
La Source is faultless. The maiden has every grace and 
quality except life, and I have never desired, after my first 
examination, to look at her again. 

Nor in my many visits to the Louvre have I ever 
paused a second time before Ingres' VOdalisgue Couchee, 
another smooth, perfect, and lifeless nude ; nor before his 
Apotheosis of Homer. Having discovered the iden- 
tities of Hesiod, ^Eschylus, Virgil, Plato, and the rest, this 
formal design, of which Raphael would have approved, 
wholly ceased to interest me. It was not through his pic- 
tures that I became' a reverent admirer of Ingres. One 
afternoon I saw on the wall of a studio in London an 
exquisite drawing of a woman seated upon a sofa. The 



INGRES, REMBRANDT AND A MODERN 201 

bright face, the lovely hands, the subtle lines indicating 
her sleeves and gown, were a joy to the eye. It was Ingres' 
portrait oi Madame Destouche. Later I became the possessor 
of a volume containing a selection of Ingres' drawings of 
men and women. They are a delight. Looking at them, 
I realise the sincerity of Ingres' remark — " The lines are 
often broken in the human face to be woven together again 
and intertwined, like the osiers out of which a basket is 
made." It is on record that Ingres was discontented with 
his portrait drawings that we find so alluring. It was his 
ambition to paint subject pictures, in the grand classical 
manner, like his idiotic Virgil Reading the jEneid, in the 
Brussels Gallery, which is dead as Fuseli's Satan Calling 
his Legions. Ingres' portrait of Monsieur Bertin, which 
he esteemed so lightly, is as alive to-day as in the hour 
it was painted. His drawings are cherished by the 
twentieth century. 

For forty years Ingres was discredited in France, except 
by the few who perceived his gift behind his mannerism. 
The waves of Impressionism and Realism swept over the 
painter of UOdalisque CoticMe, and the cry went up that 
his art was dead. He was called " a Chinaman lost in 
Athens, a very French bourgeois with a passion for the 
ancient Greeks." He was the butt of gibingj tongues. 
Theophile Silvestre proclaimed that he never put a single 
idea into his works, nor a soul into his portraits. In 1855 
Delacroix made this wise criticism : " Here we have the 
complete expression of an incomplete intelligence." That 
sentence seems to me to be true. Nature never called him 
to be a painter of pictures. The gift of colour was wholly 
denied to him. His art was delicate and feminine. He 



202 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

suffered from over-civilisation. He led a school, but he 
was never a force. 

Mr. Brangwyn is a force. The passion for opulent colour, 
and joy in the bustle of life, surges from his personality, as 
the love of lovely and delicate lines meandered from the 
personality of Ingres. Mr. Brangwyn sees life broadly and 
vigorously in masses and contrasts. He is a painter, never 
a story-teller, an observer, objective and eager, revelling in 
such a subject as an Eastern orange market, with its 
spaces splashed with colour, and the figures mere incidents 
of the decorative scheme. Such a bloodless abstraction 
as Virgil Reading the ^neid is as remote from him as his 
full-blooded Cide7 Press would have been to Ingres. 

No modern artist, I think, has found himself so com- 
pletely, in so short a time, as Mr. Brangwyn. Time was when 
he was a painter of grey subjects, such as A Sailor's Funeral ; 
but restlessness, and the longing to glut his eyes with the 
wonder and magnificence of the world, seized him, and, being 
impetuous, off he started to circumnavigate the globe. 
We hear of him, in 1887 at Tunis, at Smyrna, at Trebizoud, 
at Constantinople. The key of the East was his ; he threw 
wide the door, and found the immemorial East waiting. 
I never read that fine tale by Mr. Conrad, called " Youth," 
perhaps his finest story, without thinking of the first flash 
of the East in young Brangwyn's eyes. In their youth 
writer and painter both sought the East, "so old, so 
mysterious, resplendent and sombre, living and unchanged, 
full of danger and promise." It captivated, entranced 
them, and they expressed it so vividly, that the East, as 
seen by them in words and paint, is part of our lives. 



INGRES, REMBRANDT AND A MODERN 203 

I close my eyes and see again the Rembrandts that 
waited for the hammer on the sixth day of the Lawson 
sale. On the mantelpiece stood a brilliant impression, 
" full of burr," of his magnificent landscape, The Three 
Trees. A print of it hangs on my wall ; it cost me a 
sovereign. The Lawson proof fetched £Q&0. My grocer 
would probably not see much difference between them. 
But oh ! that difference to the trained eye — the difference 
between a threatening storm on a theatre drop scene and 
Nature stirring herself to anger above the Winchelsea 
marsh. 

The sight of The Three Trees, perhaps the highest 
achievement in original etching, stimulated me to pay a 
visit to a collection of Mr. Brangwyn"'s new etchings. 

Whistler promulgated a law about etching — that the 
plate should not be beyond a certain small size, and that 
the line should have a flower-like delicacy. 

There Whistler erred. That was the way for him ; but 
each man in art, as in everything else, must find his own 
way — fashion the only way for the right expression of his 
temperament. 

Mr. Brangwyn''s plates are huge. His line is strong al- 
most to brutality, but what force and virility there are in 
his men straining at the rope along the towing-path ; what 
power in his Building South Kensington Museum ; what 
majesty in his Breaking Up of the Hannibal. 

Leaning on a chair in the midst of the Brangwyns was 
an engraving by James War of Rembrandt's The Centurion 
Cornelius, one of those profoundly spiritual, haunting 
Scripture scenes that the Dutchmen felt so strongly, and 
feeling, expressed so poignantly. 



S04 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

To turn from this to the Brangwyns was — well, it was 
to be whirled from a quiet age of faith and unquestioning 
belief to the rushing and outwardly materialistic twentieth 
century. 

But Mr. Brangwyn is quite right ! He lives in his own 
age ; he draws his inspiration from life, not from books. 
He is strong enough to be himself, and therein lies his 
power to impress you and me. We may prefer the Rem- 
brandt temperament; but Brangwyn remains — a force. 



AN ACADEMY SOIREE 

T\0 pictures look well or ill by artificial light ? It 
depends upon the picture. 

There were troubled hearts at the Royal Academy soiree. 
Every exhibitor was invited, and all, I suppose, visited 
their pictures during the evening, sometimes to find them 
woefully changed under the blaze of the electric lights. 
The reds remain firm, but the fierce glare of the incandes- 
cent lamps washes the colour from blues and yellows, and 
hurries twilight over grey, low-toned pictures. 

The well or ill aspect of the canvases under such condi- 
tions depends upon the choice of pigments and the method 
of the technique. Some greens are forced out of value, 
others remain as harmonious as by daylight. 

The sculptures certainly gain in dignity and impressive- 
ness at an Academy soiree. Mute they stand above the 
chatter and the strains of the Royal Artillery band ; 
immobile amidst the gleam of the tender dresses of girls 
and women, the white waistcoats of success, and the 



AN ACADEMY SOIREE 205 

decorations of diplomats and mayors. Above the hub- 
bub, like some god knowing all things now that he is 
resting from his labour, brooded Mr. George Frampton's 
vast seated statue of the late Marquess of Salisbury — 
thought made bronze, the great brow furrowed but quies- 
cent, head and figure a symbol of eternal repose. And 
in front of him, at the head of the stairs, a symbol, by 
virtue of his office, of eternal restlessness, was the President 
of the Royal Academy, doomed from nine o'clock until 
midnight to tether himself to a few steps of carpet, to 
advance to every guest with hardly a second's rest, and to 
give to every right hand the grasp of welcome. 

Eternal repose ! Eternal restlessness ! 

I passed from the interminable kaleidoscope to the 
Lecture Room, where the majority of the sculptures were 
displayed. Although the lips of the guests seated there 
were closed, it was far from being a place of silence ; but 
the noise was melodious. Scattered over the floor like 
chessmen were the members of the Royal Artillery band, 
and the music they played were those wild Hungarian 
waltzes that fire the heart and set brain and feet dancing 
with a mad longing for an intenser life to which the 
episodes of everyday seem prologue. Here again the 
mute statues took to themselves a new meaning. Above 
the conductor's head — strange and arresting contrasts ! — 
yearned Mr. Pomeroy's kneeling figure of the late Bishop 
Ridding, his ascetic head stretched forward, his hands 
thrust forth in prayer — to what ? 

The bishop's eyes, peering over the heads of the 
musicians, rested upon Orpheus, that strange and attrac- 
tive mythological Greek, about whom centred, at one 



206 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

time, a monastic order believing in the migi'ation of souls 
and other mystic doctrines. Here, in Mr. Swan's group, he 
stands as the first musician, touching his lyre, charming and 
vexing the panthers that slither up the pedestal to the in- 
different boy god, while the bandsmen of the Royal Artillery 
race on with their wild music, oblivious of the strange, 
wordless drama that is being played above their heads. 

The present seemed far removed. Nearer to my con- 
sciousness, more real, was Mr. Gilbert's Death the Gate 
of Life. Panoplied and adorned for death, garbed in gold 
and colour as for a triumph, a man and woman, embracing, 
sit above the sarcophagus, clutching still at the idea of 
human love ; he is dead, she is living. Eros as a child 
flutters beneath, and in the arms of the mourned and the 
mourner is a reliquary with love sleeping on the lid, 
destined for the man's ashes. Also near to my conscious- 
ness, and real, seemed the memorials — palettes, portraits, 
annotated catalogues — upstairs in the private rooms, ot 
painters long, long dead. 

From Orpheus to the Conductor of the Royal Artillery 
band ; from the first President of the Royal Academy to 
the present President still grasping hands at the top of 
the stairs ; from the bustling pictures of the year crowd- 
ing the walls to those mute tools of passed artists — dead 
but unforgotten. 

The continuity of it all ! The endless acting and re- 
acting one upon another. Lessons filtering down from 
generation to generation, and all around the vivid present 
— that whirling music, satin shoes beating to it on the 
polished floor, and a merry marble statue of a dancing elf 
posturing before Mr. Gilbert's magnificent solemnity. 



AUGUST 



AUGUST 



CHATEAU GAILLARD AND A SONG 
rilHE watering-places of Normandy are not beautiful — 
-■- just steep, stony beaches between chalk cliffs, with 
half the sea front filched by jerry-built casinos wherein, at 
the ridiculous game of petits chevaux, Innocents lose a 
week's hotel bill in an evening. 

" Yes," said the croupier, after he had covered up the 
little steeds with brown holland for their night's rest, "the 
bank wins in the end — always. It must. The little horses 
pay the expenses of the casino. The play here is pastime. 
I go to Nice or Monte Carlo in the winter. Ah ! the 
money on the tables there. It is beautiful, beautiful ! "" 

What is beauty ? To the croupier it was a gaming- 
table piled with money. To me last week it was a castle 
perched upon green hills above a noble river — Chateau 
Gaillard, built by Richard Coeur-de-Lion ; the outpost, 
" Saucy Castle," that protected Normandy from the French 
monarchs, sailing hither by France*'s immemorial highway 
— the Seine. 

The sea has no memory ; ever changing, it is changeless ; 
but a river remembers for a thousand years. If you would 
know Normandy woo the Seine as Turner did — the Seine, 
that from the beginning of time has borne oceanwards the 
seci'ets and triumphs of Paris and Rouen. She saw the 
smoke of the burning of Joan of Arc ; she carried on her 



210 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

roomy bosomthe dead body of William the Conqueror 
to burial at Caen ; she flows still a broad, swift, bright 
stream, washing fields, skirting villages, where once dwelt 
the families who became the ancestors of the new nobility 
of England. 

Still gazing down upon the Seine stands Chateau 
Gaillard, once the key of Normandy, now an excursion 
from Rouen. 

To Chateau Gaillard, on the Seine, tired of mushroom 
bathing resorts, last week''s white dresses and multifarious 
millinery, I journeyed, and passing through Petit Andely, 
came soon to a bridle-track, steep and narrow. At the 
foot was a sign-post upon which was inscribed in tall 
letters, " Rue Richard Coeur-de-Lion." France loves such 
magnificent pranks. 

Upward I climbed, upward, and saw unfolding before 
me all the fertile, sun-drenched land, with the Seine 
shimmering and rippling in her broad curves as if she had 
never washed a care away or drowned a tragedy. Petit 
Andely basked beneath, and up the valley Grand Andely 
lurked between hills, the church dating from the thirteenth 
century, the hotel from the sixteenth, with its memories 
of Victor Hugo and Sir Walter Scott. 

Here was peace. Nature, the bounteous and forgiving 
had covered with her golden meadows and clover fields all 
trace of man's naughtiness. The sun shone. The Seine 
flowed silently by tree-embowered islands and verdant 
banks. Gleaners moved slowly across the meadows : a 
white building caught the sun ; church spires, dark and 
slender, shot up into the blue sky. All was wrapped in 
silence. The world had recovered its primordial peace. 



CHATEAU GAILLARD AND A SONG 211 

Neither Union Jack nor Tricolour waved in this place of 
eternal summer and eternal repose. 

On the slopes of Chateau Gaillard, lulled to languor 
by the beauty of this lotus-land, I lingered. Why go 
farther ? Why return to the monotonous sea, to casinos 
where croupiers were blinking in the sunshine awaiting 
the moment to tinkle the bell that calls the Innocents to 
the gaming-table? Why jostle with the crowd on the 
gritty plage, dodging the kites of children and the leading 
strings of shaved poodles, unwillingly following corpulent 
mistresses ? Why again urge the bicycle along those 
interminable Rues Nationales, where one may travel for 
fifteen miles and never pass a village or meet a human face? 
Why not 

Yes ! Down there in Petit Andely is a white inn, old 
and rambling, facing the Seine, a sylvan spot, beloved of 
fishermen, with Chateau Gaillard slumbering overhead to 
remind the wayfarer that there had been periods of conten- 
tion before this era of universal peace. At that white 
inn bordering the Seine I will stay. 

I descended. It was the hour for tea ; it was also the 
moment to perform a duty — that of discovering if the 
Entente Cordiale had spread to the hamlet. I asked for 
tea, promising myself that I would discuss the Entente after 
the first cup. Tea ! They were ignorant of the beverage. 
Nom de Dieul What was the use of discussing the 
Entente in a village where the word " tea "" is unknown ? 

Drinking sour cider as a substitute, I heard music, 
harsh, but valiant, smite the peace of the afternoon. 
Rising, I looked along the dusty road at an approaching 
piano organ drawn by a donkey. A woman turned the 



212 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

handle as the machine of melody progressed; a man sang a 
ballad to the accompaniment, and two children, ragged, 
bare-footed, black-pinafored, ran hither and thither selling 
sheets of ballads for a sou apiece. Villagers peered from 
doorways, the fisherman left his rod, and I, who had fared 
forth to encourage the Entente, found myself joining in 
this chorus, from the ballad called " Pauvre Mere 
Alsacienne," beneath Richard Coeur- de-Lion's proud 
castle : 

" Pawvre mere Alsacienne, 
Loin de moi tu te meurs ; 
— Ah I cruelle est ma peine — 

Dit-elle avec des pleurs ; 
Quand done lesjils de France 

Iront-ils en "vainqueurs 
Pour punir Firisolence, 
De nos mis oppresseurs ? " 



CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN 

X HAVE climbed my last mountain. 

Last Thursday afternoon I stood in a meadow at 
Sulden, and, staring skyward, blinked at the sunshine on 
the mighty head of the Ortler. It is the highest mountain 
in the Eastern Alps — the highest. 

The next day, at four in the afternoon, I started with 
a guide. For an hour we scrambled over moraines and 
debris until we reached the foot of the Tabaretta rocks. 
There, had I been alone, I should have stopped, for those 
gigantic rock cliffs looked about as accessible as the facade 



CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN 213 

of St. Paul's Cathedral. Without a word the guide began 
the ascent, the earth receding horribly as we climbed. For 
two hours I, panting, watched his back. There was not 
a crease of sympathy in it. He did not turn even when 
the winding, nearly vertical path changed to a flight of 
crumbling steps, protected from the abyss by a wire rope. 
I clutched it, swayed, fought the vertigo, and almost cried 
with joy when, half an hour later, raising myself on my 
hands, I tumbled like a sack of coals upon the tiny grass 
plateau bordering the glacier from which the Ortler 
towers. Close by was the Payer-Hiitte, where we proposed 
to sleep. It was eight o"'clock, and indescribably cold. I 
regained my breath, muttering between the gasps, " Never 
again ! " 

I peeped over the edge, and recoiled. I looked again. 
Yes ! Somebody was ascending the path. He was a 
native. I gazed at him wide-eyed. On his left shoulder 
he balanced 10ft. of zinc piping ; his right hand carried 
a bag of tools, and his left nursed the bowl of 
a huge hookah pipe, from which he blew contempla- 
tive spirals against the sunset. He swung himself over the 
crest of the rocks, threw the zinc piping upon the plateau, 
knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and said, " So ! " 

After supper I tried to sleep in a room which I shared 
with fourteen burly Germans and Austrians. The windows 
were closed. An evil oil lamp swung from a rafter. 
Before dawn heavy forms, one by one, raised themselves, 
generally with groans, from their couches, and heavy hob- 
nailed boots tramped out into the unpeopled night. I, 
too, rose silently, with a white face. There were two small 
tin washing basins and two towels. But it did not matter. 



214 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

There was that awful mountain outside — waiting for 
me. 

I drank my coffee, shivering, and watched the dawn 
surprise an icy world. Presently a figure, whom I recog- 
nised as my guide, beckoned through the window. He 
coiled the end of the rope around my waist, and I knew 
what a turkey feels when it is about to be trussed. And — 
and — while I was being trussed over my left shoulder I saw 
the path. 

It was our path, for far beyond, spots of ink on the white 
snow, I saw the unfortunates who had preceded me moving 
across the glacier. How tiny the path was ; how huge and 
ghostly the glacier ; and how terrible the slope that went 
sheer down to death. 

I felt a tug at the rope, and stepped out upon that path, 
trampled with the feet of my predecessors. Was it a foot 
wide ? I doubt it. Inclining my body toward the land- 
ward side until my ear tingled at the touch of the snow, 
with eyes half closed to shut out the sight of the depths 
into which a false step might plunge me, I followed my 
guide up the mountain, passing from one dread danger 
to another. Anxiety, call it fear if you like, became 
chronic. I thought of nothing except that every step 
brought me nearer to the summit ; but with that encour- 
aging thought came the reflection — " True, but you've got 
to return, little cellular thing ! " 

The route was horribly diversified. There are things 
they call crests, and shoulders, and ridges, and sometimes 
you hear an awful sort of booming movement somewhere, 
and the guide cries " Boulder ! " Then the rope tugs you 
forward, and you both run and cower behind a rock. I 



CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN 215 

know that sometimes, seeming hours at a stretch, my eyes 
never dared raise themselves from my guide's footprints in 
the snow. Once one of the preceding parties dropped an 
ice axe. Warning shouts set us crouching, horribly appre- 
hensive. We watched the axe bounding down the moun- 
tain side, leaping higher at every bound. It flashed past 
us a few yards away. 

And once I was left alone ! We had come suddenly upon 
a gulley several feet wide. Beyond it was a wall of ice 
with rough steps hacked in it. A wooden ladder was 
balanced across the gulley. You could have pitched a flock 
of sheep into that gulley, and the gulley would have 
swallowed them all. The guide uncoiled several yards of 
rope. " I go up, up," he said, " you rest here tranquil ' 
When you feel rope tug you walk up ladder. See ? " 

I watched him ascend the ladder, and continue on all 
fours up the wall of ice, I was alone in eternity. I tried 
to light a cigarette. Hopeless ! Matches and cigarettes 
were soaked by my frequent falls in the snow. Then came 
the warning tug. I crossed the ladder, embraced the ice 
slope, and was hoisted up like a bale of merchandise. " Dat 
is gut," said the guide as he received my body into his 
arms, dusted it, and replaced it on its feet. 

" The summit lies at the highest point of a sharp arete 
of snow." That guide-book description must suffice for 
the last five minutes. I prefer to blot that arete from my 
memory. 

But the summit ! Ifs tremendous to look out upon a 
world of untrodden snow, peaks rising from every desolate 
field ! The utter loneliness of it hurts. It's like standing 
on the North Pole. All around the sky touches the horizon. 



216 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

There's no hint that man ever existed. You, a foot-sore 
dot, with a heart beating like a mining stamp, are the 
centre of the universe. You are the first man and the last 
man — encompassed by the beginning of things. It's the 
creation of the world, and you have a seat in the gallery. 
The oppression of immensity, of awful, unutterable forces, 
of the eternal laws from which man can never escape, draws 
body and soul into the chilly soul of the Cosmos, and the 
toys of life — love, friendship, adventure, art, books and 
righteousness — are as if they never had been. Standing 
there on the summit I saw a thousand feet below three 
specks, men, roped together, gliding like serpents over a 
jagged ridge. Then the mist descended and I saw them 
no more. They were making the ascent by a route " diffi- 
cult and dangerous." I had come by the " easy way." 

Then we began the descent. The mist cleared and I saw 
where I should fall if I fell. 

In the afternoon I limped into the hotel garden at 
Sulden — worn, wasted, but triumphant. Luck was still 
with me, for sipping his coffee at a table was a member 
of the Alpine Club whom I knew. 

" I've just been up the Ortler by the Tabaretta Rock," 
said I. 

" Oh, the Ortler ! " said he. " Then you've had a nice 
walk ! '" 




MY FRIEND THE FAILURE 217 



MY FRIEND THE FAILURE 

T CAME to this seaside village for quietness after a 
foreign ramble, also to paint two small pictures. 
From where I sit I can see across the bay, half a mile 
distant, three rafts, to which the bathers, whose tents are 
pitched on the opposite shore, swim out. Beyond rise the 
hills, and in a fold of them is a wooded village, with an 
old church, where my friend, Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky, is 
holding his twenty-third annual summer sketching class. 

Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky has failed in art ; but he does 
not know it, and I would not for the world tell him so. 
He has a class of twenty-three girls, all pretty, whose 
fathers or guardians pay him a good round sum for his 
three months' instruction in art. And I shall give him a 
fiver for an occasional criticism of the two pictures I am 
trying to paint. 

One will be a representation of the bay in the sunshine, 
with the belt of golden sand on the farther shore as the 
highest light, and a yacht with a white sail, or perhaps a 
red one, skimming across the dancing water. The other 
will be a nocturne, seen in that wonderful quarter of an 
hour which is neither day nor night, when the reflections 
of the lamps shimmer criss-cross on the water, and for a 
few minutes the sea is a sheet of burnished silver ; you 
can distinguish the three rafts, dots in the silver, half a 
mile away. I shall call it The Rafts. Nobody will be 
able to see them. That will be my secret. Mr. Happy- 
Go-Lucky says they will be mistaken for porpoises. No 
matter. 



ns THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

He is painting an immense picture, a seven-footer, 
which will be another failure. It is not a paintable 
subject. One might make a pretty religious poem on the 
theme ; but he is set upon painting it, and will carry the 
thing through. Why shouldn't he ? He makes enough 
money by his summer pupils to keep him through the 
year, and by doing without a new dress-suit, which he 
wants badly, he can pay for the canvas and colours. 

He saw the motive the other afternoon. The small 
south door of the church was open. We passed from the 
cool, dark building into the sunlight, and toiled up the 
steep graveyard, which clings to the side of a hill, to an 
old cross at the summit, with only a stone wall between it 
and the moor. The ascent to the cross was worn by many 
feet, and on either side were battered sixteenth-century 
tombs and ancient elms. When we returned to the church 
we saw, carved on the stone lintel of the doorway, the 
words " Via Crucis," and beyond in the sunlight were the 
worn steps leading up to the symbol. " Here''s my picture," 
said Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky. " What a noble motive ! " 

It has been difficult to write or paint during the past 
week, as last Saturday a camp of 2000 Volunteers pitched 
their tents in a meadow between the village and the bay. 
You walk along the roads and tumble over a scout hiding 
behind a haystack with his rifle cocked at a brood of ducks ; 
you choose a quiet place in a rutty lane and settling your- 
self beneath a white umbrella begin a sketch, when a de- 
tachment of armed cyclists come scorching down, and the 
landscape is lost in clouds of dust. Then the many 
bands, fife, drum, and brass, are never silent. If only they 
would not play " It don't seem right to me." 



MY FRIEND THE FAILURE 219 

Yesterday evening Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky and I struck 
over the moors to the farther cliffs, and after we had 
exhausted our epithets in admiration of the view, headland 
after headland sweeping away into the haze of infinity, a sea 
bathed in light, and a distant liner churning through what 
looked like a lake of sunrays, we sat down, talked about 
art, and drifted into a discussion of the commercial side, 
and the value of pictures and sculpture as a national 
asset. 

" Governments should encourage art for the sake of 
posterity," I said. " Look at Italy ! Why is she so 
flourishing ? Why are her national stocks so high ? 
Because of the horde of tourists who visit her towns to see 
her works of art. The same with Paris, Athens, Madrid, 
Amsterdam, and many other cities. It is the wisdom of 
dead Kings and forgotten Governments in collecting works 
of art that makes hotel-keepers and tradesmen rub their 
hands. It's art that fills their pockets ! England is awaking 
to this. I raise my hat to the Government, because they 
refused to allow the new Stationery Office to be built at the 
back of the Tate Gallery, knowing that the Tate must 
soon want additional room. If only they would pull down 
the barracks at the rear of the National and Portrait 
Galleries, and add additional rooms to those institutions. 
we should be the greatest tourist-gathering nation in the 
world. Perhaps they will." 

At this point I stopped, for Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky had 
fallen into a gentle slumber. 

You might think from the above references to my friend 
the Failure that being a Failure is not a bad occupation. 
Perhaps it isn't ; but Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky has his troubles. 



220 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

His grizzled beard protects him from heart flutterings, but 
he has no end of anxiety about the love affairs of his pupils. 
I overheard one of them say the other evening, a girl with 
fluffy fair hair and eyes like stars — " If I can't get the man 
I want, I shall take up art seriously." 



RUSKIN'S PLANS AND SCAFFOLDINGS 
rriWICE in the course of my peregrinations round the 
picture exhibition of the moment I heard a lady 
remark : " I hate to be reminded of unpleasant things. 
Why do men paint horrors ? " The especial objects of her 
aversion were the Spaniards, Zuloaga and Anglada- 
Camarasa ; Louis Legrand, painter of Sur la Canape, 
and the set of six masterly etchings by Max Klinger, 
particularly the one called A Murder. She interested 
me. She was typical of the English temperament, which, 
for better or worse, cannot dissociate the subject from the 
treatment. The workmanship goes for nothing if the theme 
is unpleasant. 

Watching her, noting the disgust with which she pursed 
her delicate lips, I fell to thinking what Ruskin would have 
thought of this show. Not much, you may be sure. He 
who found the negative ugliness of the Dutch painters dis- 
tasteful would have deemed the positive ugliness of the 
ultra French and Spanish school horrible. 

I am just re-reading " Modern Painters" in the pocket 
five-volume edition, and am once more adrift in the magical 
prose of that wizard pen. It is the fashion nowadays 
among the younger art students to sneer politely at Ruskin. 



RUSKIN'S PLANS AND SCAFFOLDINGS 221 

But what have we gained ? In technique we have advanced. 
In sheer cleverness of execution there are a thousand 
modern painters whose work would astonish Ruskin and 
the Old Masters ; but the only branch of art where there 
is any real progress is landscape. In the philosophy of 
art, in the explanation of the intention of the artist, we 
are like scattered sheep, each uttering its cry to the un- 
answering heaven. " The point is," murmurs the modern 
philosophic art critic, " whether the painter has stated an 
emotional mood of life or nature in terms of colour, line, 
and form, so that we have that emotion aroused in us." 
Now hear Ruskin ! " Adoration to the Deity, revelation 
to mankind "" — that is the aim the painter should nurse 
in his heart. Have we gained by outgrowing Ruskin ? Is 
the new definition wiser, truer, or more helpful ? Try ! 

The modern schools of scientific art critics are so level- 
headed, and so concerned with archives and attributions, 
that there is no room in their books for mere eloquence 
and ideals. And in truth the world has moved since Ruskin 
penned his art flights. He contradicted himself, some of 
his opinions are splendidly wrong. Indeed, he was always 
willing to change them when the change betokened growth. 
But Ruskin was much more than an art critic ; he was a 
critic and interpreter of life itself, a preacher without a 
pulpit, a poet who wrote in prose, a painter whose medium 
was pen and ink. He gilded plain words with heavenly 
alchemy. The irony is that he, a man whose life was de- 
voted to the delivery of his message, is esteemed now more 
for the style in which the message was delivered than for 
the message itself. 

Jle conjured with the English language, and gave to 



THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

hislong, winding sentences the magic of poetry and the 
rhythm of music. He begins a clause quietly, but as he 
reaches the climax the pinions unfold, the bird swoops and 
soars, the full stop comes only when the last gleam of the 
wings has vanished in the blue. His love of words led him 
on a dance away from his thought — and yet, this is the 
difficulty of writing about Ruskin, he was so many-sided, 
he wrote so much, that any criticism of him can be dis- 
proved. " The Two Paths " (it cost 6d.) which lies before 
me isalmost conversational in its simplicity, and half an 
hour ago I read the " because "" passage from " Fors 
Clavigera," wherein he defends himself against his critics. 
The effect was like going out of a dark house into the sun- 
shine. A child could understand that " because " passage ; 
only a Ruskin could have composed it. I know no writer 
who has such power to stimulate instantly. He opens a 
window. It may be to joy, it may be to sorrow, but it is 
always to something better than what one has been thinking 
about or doing. 

Last week I saw a collection of 227 water-colours and 
drawings by John Ruskin. It was an exhibition which 
produced a startling effect the moment of entering the 
room. I was content to stand still, looking and wondering. 
It seemed as if that crowded life, passed in the quest of 
beauty and of the soul behind the substance, was flashed 
from the outer vanished world into that room. Those draw- 
ings, years of patient labour, were but the plans and scaffold- 
ings that enabled him to rear the edifice of his written works. 
That flower-like drawing of Rosslyn Chapel^ that intricate 
rendering of a corner of the Ducal Palace of Venice, that 
vision of Chavwuni, what do they tell ? That only inten- 



RUSKIN^S PLANS AND SCAFFOLDINGS 223 

sity of feeling and intensity of love, those ingredients of 
greatness, could have lavished such a passion of diligence 
on work that was merely preparatory to self-expression in 
writing. 

When I wonder again at such a passage as that which 
leads up to " those grey heaps of deep-wrought stone "" in 
" The Seven Lamps of Architecture " I shall remember 
these di'awings, and understand. 

He himself looked down from the walls. In one, a por- 
trait by George Richmond, he sits on a terrace above a lake, 
a bright, bird-like figure, tall and slim, the blue eyes out- 
gleaming the blue necktie. He is twenty-four, the first 
volume of " Modern Painters "" has just been published, the 
world is all before him. In the other, a photograph, his 
great life has been nearly lived through. He sits upon a 
seat, an old, shaggy, bent man, with a leonine head, and by 
his side sits another veteran, Hoiman Hunt, talking to him. 

All around in the room were evidences of Turner — his 
idol. Water colours and drawings by Ruskin that were 
modelled on Turner ; a rough pencil sketch of The Sun 
of Venice Going to Sea, which Ruskin made at the Royal 
Academy in 1843, and for copying which he was turned out 
of the gallery ; and the first edition of the " Stones of 
Venice," with the inscription " J. M. W. Turner, R. A. — 
with the author"'s affectionate and respectful regards." 

I do not suppose Turner read a word of it. He did not 
understand literary enthusiasm. Paint, not words, was his 
medium. All he said to his young champion when he was 
starting off on one of his foreign tours was : " Don't make 
your parents anxious. They will be in such a fidget about 
you." 



224 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 



MILLET'S MOMENTS 

O TRANGE it is that Millet, the peasant, who drew his 
^ wife cutting cabbages in their cottage garden at 
Barbizon, and his sons carrying a calf into a shed — finding 
in such simple themes perfect expression of his genius — 
should now be enshrined in a limited edition at four guineas 
a copy. 

But Millet, if he still has cognisance of mundane affairs, 
must have long passed the limit of amused surprise at the 
ways of man. That must have been reached when his 
Angelus, by no means his best work, which he sold with 
difficulty in his lifetime for <£'40, fetched 30,000 guineas 
in a French auction-room. Even the pastel of The 
Angelus is now priced at d6*5000. Why, a certain draw- 
ing tossed on one side in the studio when Millet, with 
" his deep chest and grave head," seated himself at the 
clothless kitchen table to fill earthen plates with the 
children's dinner, is valued now at £600. But the prices 
do not matter a penny piece except to sellers and buyers. 
Our concern is with Millet, the man and the artist. 

Whether Millet was happy or unhappy does not really 
signify. No man who sees and feels as deeply as Rem- 
brandt and Millet saw and felt can be uniformly happy. 
But they have their moments of ecstasy. 

Such moments Millet had when he wrote thus to Sensier 

"Everything dances together in my brain . . . the 
glory of God dwelling upon the heights, and other heights, 
veiled in darkness," 



MILLET'S MOMENTS 225 

Also when he wrote : 

" Oh, how I wish I could make those who see my work 
feel the splendours and terrors of the night ! One ought 
to be able to make people hear the songs, the silences, and 
murmurings of the air." 

Do not these heart-cries show the kind of man Millet 
was, better than pages of description ? It is because 
Millet felt deeply that he is able to touch and impress us 
deeply. No mere technical power in drawing the peasant 
figure, however accomplished, could have achieved this. 
No Ingres of the fields could so move us. The fleeting 
foolishness of " Art for Art's sake," that had its little span 
of hectic life a few years ago, has gone the way of all fads 
and fashions. 

The figure of Ruskin, haloed in idealism, shot with bril- 
liant wilfulnesses, is again a force ; and Millet, with his 
adoration of God in Nature, his cries of " I am a peasant 
— a peasant," and " I am the man my native place has made 
me," looms forth as the apostle of a new religion in art. 

His life stands out clear and simple, in broad mass, like 
the great oak-tree his friend Rousseau painted. Sprung 
from a family of peasants, he lived the life of a peasant 
boy, ploughing, sowing, hoeing, reaping, noting the courses 
of the seasons, and deriving from his parents and relations 
spiritual and aesthetic sustenance, and the example of fine 
lives, religious in the true sense. His father would say to 
him : 

" Look at that tree — how large and beautiful ! It is 
beautiful as a flower." 



226 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

And on another occasion : 

" That house half-buried by the field is good ; it seems 
to me that it ought to be drawn that way." 

To the Bible, which he read with delight and not as a 
duty, was added Virgil, introduced to the boy by the Cure 
of Greville. The "Georgics" and the "Bucolics" made a pro- 
found impression upon him, and it is said that the beauty 
of the world first became real to him after reading Virgil's 
line, "It is the hour when the great shadows descend 
upon the plain." 

Everything seemed to conspire to lead Millet firmly 
towards his true life-work. That hateful time in Paris, 
his forty days in the wilderness, when he made his living 
by painting Boucher pastiches, and classical and so-called 
religious pictures, showed him by practical experience the 
work that he did not want to do, work that left his heart 
and pulse dull. Somewhere in the Vatican, strange to say, 
is an Immaculate Conception that he painted to order 
for the Pope's private railway carriage. 

But such things were fugitive. They were details. The 
keynote of his life was struck when he sent The Winnower 
to the Salon of 1848. He settled at Barbizon in 1849, and 
there he lived, for twenty-seven years, a patriarchal life, 
painting, drawing, dreaming, thinking, and, as his family 
grew, the cottage of three rooms was gradually enlarged 
to meet their requirements. In those years many of his 
drawings, his second wife and children serving as models, 
were made. They astonish and delight each time they are 
seen. Truly they are epics of the soil — the sower, the 
gleaners, the charcoal-burners. 



MILLETS MOMENTS 227 

Millet re-stated, in the art which was the readiest means 
of his self-expression, the old truth, forgotten by so many 
of his predecessors, that " one must be able to make use of 
the trivial for the expression of the sublime." Old Crome 
was of the same mind. The homely becomes epical, 
according to the vision and power of the seer. A woman 
pasturing her cow and the Eternal creating man are one 
in the scheme of things, parts of the unity. Millet's 
Sower, or Peasants Going to Work, has the same effect on 
our emotions as Michael Angelo's frescoes in the Sistine 
Chapel. Millet, after he had passed through the period of 
probation, tossed the past of art with its traditions away, 
as we doff our raiment at night. He went back to Nature 
and was himself. That was all. Very simple. It leads to 
success — after you are dead ; and the reason that more 
men do not tread that path is because great souls combined 
with great powers are rare, and few of us are prepared to 
make the sacrifices that the " Via Dolorosa of immortality " 
entails. 

It was probably no sacrifice to Millet. He did what he 
desired, to the world's great gain. He took the path of 
i^ast resistance and found poverty and immortality by the 
way. A millionaire lately dead also took the line of least 
resistance, the difference between the two men being that 
the life of one multiplied his own wealth ; the life of the 
other increased the wealth of the world. 



THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 



COLOUR 

rriHE medium of water-colour has a fascination for artists 
with delicate, swift perceptions, and the impulse to 
realise them swiftly. The rapid changes of light, colour, and 
movement, gone almost before they have been visualised, 
can be best portrayed by the rapid colour notes that the 
worker in water-colour makes from nature. Turner is 
the parent of these flashes of colour that retain on the 
paper the moist illusion of atmosphere, holding the sun so 
fugitively that one almost fears it will vanish even as 
one gazes. I am aware that the artists who hold that the 
province of water-colour is the rendering of atmospheric 
effects, notes of aerial colour, luminous tones, in a word, 
the transitory beauty of nature, are few in number. In 
water-colour, as in all the other branches of art, the man of 
genius or strong talent may, and does, over-ride tradition 
and theory, and convince us that his method is the right 
one for himself. But Sir John Gilbert has not convinced 
me that water-colour was the right method to adopt for 
his Guy Fawkes before James the First. Neither does 
Charles Green persuade me that the elaborate detail of 
A Fascinating Volume is suitable for water-colour. But 
before Whistler's Little Sea Piece — all atmosphere and 
light — hints of boats sailing under a suggested sky, on the 
slightest indication of a sea, there I feel at home again. 
Water-colour has been used to express an aerial effect, wet 
and wide, loose and large, that only water-colour was able 
to express. 

Turner, happily, has his followers now, and those who 



COLOUR 229 

feel that the art of water-colour should be but staining 
the paper with the pearly lights of a dawn, the running 
hues of a sunset, or the fairy world that is reflected in still 
lake and trembling wave, acknowledge his august father- 
hood. Turner when he had passed through the early stages 
of his development would not laboriously and conscien- 
tiously reproduce in water-colour yonder pinafored child 
feeding a puppy by the lock gate. His quick eye roving 
around would have caught the flash of that kingfisher's 
wing against that pink cloud, and he would have made it 
immortal with a splash. Colour in water-colour, as in oil 
painting, is an inspiration. Impressed by the subtle 
quality of a sky, you ask the painter how he produced 
it. He cannot tell. Or, attempting a reply in words, he 
may say — "Let me see, a touch of vermilion and pale 
chrome in a lot of white, and some rose doree and a little 
cobalt, and perhaps a speck of orange chrome. But really 
I don't know." It was his eyes that did it, not the re- 
flective brain — his eyes and the obedient hand. 

Colour is the confessional of personality. Like the wind, 
is there and here at once. It comes from unknown 
storehouses, differing in glory, finding expression in 
Velasquez's silver greys and flights to red and blue, Titian's 
autumn opulence, and the hasheesh dreams of Monticelli. 
The pursuit of it, assisted by absinthe, drove Monticelli 
crazy until he believed he was a reincarnation of Titian. 



SEPTEMBER 



SEPTEMBER 



WHEN THE TIDE TURNED 

TT ATE in the evening the hill-men descended from the 
uplands to the studio by the harbour, bringing with 
them bunches of tamarisk, picked from the ocean border of 
their parish, and boughs of wild fuchsia. These grey-green 
sea-shrubs and dropping red flowers were the offering of 
the hill -men to their patrons — the girls who were giving a 
dance that evening. The hill-men marched singing down 
to the studio by the harbour ; and when they were not 
singing they debated the disposition of their gifts around 
the bare walls of the vast studio, the floor of which had 
been swept and polished for dancing. There they found 
the fishermen who had brought the oil lamps from their 
boats. These feeble lights hanging from the rafters were 
dim against the three Japanese lanterns that stretched in a 
line from the dark stairway, descending like a foc''sle ladder 
from the street, to the wide-flung doors of the studio. 
Outside was the harbour. The tide was receding and the 
air still. All the world seemed exhausted and inert, after 
the burning heat of the day. 

The girls, dressed in white, looked like slight ghosts 
against the figures of the hill-men, as they flitted round 
the dark purlieus of the studio, festooning the tamarisk and 
fuchsia branches on the walls. 

The north-east end of the studio, open to the night and 



234. THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

the sea, was flooded with silver light; there we waited 
while harp and violin felt their way to a melody. Between 
us and the childish waves, so small that they made hardly 
any sound, was a stretch of sand ; in the harbour white 
yachts, gigs, fishing craft, and black seine-boats swung with 
slow, gradual movement ; and beyond, out in the bay, were 
the lights of two ketches, home-bound from the North Sea, 
waiting for high-water to creep into the harbour. 

Imperceptibly the trial notes of the harp and violin 
merged into a waltz ; the sailors tramped away to their 
homes ; but the hill-men grouped themselves in a corner by 
the side door, squatting on the floor like so many figures 
of Buddha, watching. They did not move ; their eyes 
followed the movements of the dancers; they were ab- 
sorbed, but they never spoke. 

All through the hours of that still night they remained 
motionless in their lone corner of the studio, while the tide 
oozed lower and lower, and all the land and all the ocean 
slept ; nothing moved in that hot night save the flash from 
the lighthouse, five seconds of glow, five seconds of dark- 
ness. 

Just before the tide turned I looked out into violet 
starless space, and then to the east, where the first grey 
tinge of dawn was breaking in the sky. Surely no night 
had ever been so comatose, so airless, so suggestive of a 
dying world. But that light in the sky was the harbinger 
of the world's reawakening, not its viaticum. For then, 
just then, the tide turned. 

The moment of reawakening I could not fix ; but so 
imperceptible was the change that the wind was blowing 
upon my face and the boats in the harbour were moving 



WHEN THE TIDE TURNED 235 

in the same instant. The night became vocal. I heard 
the swish of waves, the creaking of cordage, and the plash 
of water on keels. The freshening breeze rustled the 
skirts of the girls ; a man turned up his coat-collar ; the 
lights of the two ketches in the bay oscillated, and figures 
moved upon the decks. With the turn of the tide a wind 
had blown in from the sea, rousing and animating the 
world. 

The musicians played to an empty floor. All the 
dancers were watching the night, wondering at the trans- 
formation, and rejoicing. And the hill-men, from their 
dark corner, felt the influence, although they could not 
see the incoming tide rolling over the sand. They rose 
and passed out into the street. Their curiosity was ex- 
hausted ; the new day had magnetised them ; their hills 
called. 

In imagination I followed them, knowing so well their 
route. They would pass through the narrow, cobble-paved 
street and up the long hill, where the moors begin. Then 
they would wind up by bracken and gorse, higher, ever 
higher, until they reached their own land of lore and 
romance, passing on their way one of those mysterious 
monuments of antiquity, a cromlech, erected by some 
vanished race of neolithic men, ages before the astronomer- 
priests used the stone circles and menhirs to tell the hour 
by the rising of the sun and stars ; ages before the ancient 
Cornish, clad in long black cloaks, with staves in their 
hands, ran out from their beehive huts to sell tin to the 
Phoenicians anchored off* St. Michael's Mount. The hill- 
men would look askance at the cromlech, weathered by the 
storms of three thousand years, for they are a superstitious 



THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

race, and some believe that the old cromlech builders 
may still be seen moving at break of day among the 
grey stones that mark the burial-place of their neolithic 
chiefs. 

But with the rim of the sun rising above the horizon 
their fears vanish, and they hum a snatch of a waltz of 
yesterday that they heard in the long night hours before 
the tide turned. 



EMOTIONS OR INTEREST 

^HE articulated the words so clearly that those un- 
^^ familiar with the poem could follow the meaning; 
and the accompanist used the piano as an aid, not as an 
antidote. So flute-like was the singer's voice that it pene- 
trated above the roar of the wind and the thud of the 
waves. Through the open window of that studio by the 
sea I could discern the lighthouse at the end of the jetty, 
and once the foam sprinkled my cheek. That did not 
trouble me, for I was under the influence of a poem 
by Christina Rossetti and the sympathy of the singer ; 
amused, also, by the incongruity of the audience. 

The regular members of the club — artists, writers, and 
musicians — were in the picture. To them this epithala- 
mium of a lonely woman, no longer living, to whom the 
marvel of marvels was that she might behold her " King 
in his city of gold, where the least of lambs is spotless 
white in the fold, where the least and last of saints in 
spotless white is stoled " : to them, with something of the 
feminine in then' equipment, the words of that song seemed 



EMOTIONS OR INTEREST 237 

natural — perhaps affecting. But there were others present 
— burly golfers. 

One of the artists, by some curious freak of nature, is a 
plus 2 man on the famous links above the towans, beyond 
the next bay ; in the club-house, after the medal round, 
he had issued a general invitation to this gala night at 
the club. When a plus 2 man has just won the medal 
round, and beaten the professional's score, he can say and 
do what he likes. To stragglers with high handicaps his 
word is law. So the golfers, having been told that the 
evening was sans cdrSmonie, trooped into the studio in 
astonishing homespuns and friezes, ruddy of face, and 
wearing dreadful boots. They grouped themselves on the 
window side of the room, away from the pink -shaded 
lamps hanging from the rafters. These jolly-looking men 
wanted air, not feminine society. For the sake of change 
I sat among them. 

And after a while the girl sang Christina Rossetti's 
poem, beginning " My heart is like a singing bird,"" and 
so on, through that ripple of intense joy — founded on 
what.f^ Probably on no stronger a base than that on 
which most of the beautiful and deathless things in life 
are built — just the imagination working on a longing. I 
thought of her who made this song, and so many other 
sensitive, elusive, and delicate poems ; of her cloistral life? 
and the phases that sum up its progression — secluded days, 
weak health, family affections, religious thought and 
practice, sure and certain hope ; and then I thought of 
the emotional and spiritual turmoil that must have worked 
behind that smooth brow, and in the heart beneath the 
bodice of the plain dress. And, as the singer sang, I saw 



2S8 THE DIARY OE A LOOKER-ON 

the dais of silk and down, where this prim little lady 
would fain enthrone herself, broidered in doves and pome- 
granates and peacocks with a hundred eyes ; worked in 
gold and silver grapes, in leaves and silver fleur-de-lys. 
Why? 

" Because the hirthday of my life 
Is come, my love is come to me.'''' 

Then the voice ceased, and the feeling in the room, the 
murmur of commendation, hashed but intense, was of the 
kind that compels the singer to continue. And while she 
sang the poem again, I glanced at ray neighbour, a 12 
handicap man. We had played golf together that day, 
and we were still friendly. His eyes were fixed upon the 
ceiling. His pipe had gone out ; much of the ash rested 
in a fold of his chequered Harris tweed ; he was in a 
dream, lost to the world. When the song ended for the 
second time, touched by the idea of a golfer who is also a 
man of sentiment, I said to him : 

" You find those words affecting ? " 

He started, looked at me as an eagle might look at a 

lamb, and said: "Affecting — affect I was recalling 

the extraordinary fact that ^£"3,000,000 was spent on golf- 
balls last year." 

I capitulated — humoured him. We talked golf inani- 
ties. " Ah ! if only I had taken my lofting iron at the 
eleventh," I murmiu-ed. But he had no memory for my 
play. " I allowed for the wind at the third," he said, 
" and yet I was tucked up under the churchyard wall." 
Suddenly he turned and faced me. " I ought to have 
played back," he cried fiercely. 



EMOTIONS OR INTEREST 239 

The singer began again : 

" / tooli my heart in my hand 
(0, my love, O, my love,)'''' 

And so on, to the triumphant close : 

" / take my heart in my hand — 
/ shall not die, but live.'''' 

But I discerned on the face of the 12 handicap man, in 
his eyes, words and sentences that were plain to my 
understanding. Those words and phrases were " Niblick ! " 
" Brassy ! "" " Confounded hard luck ! " " Avoid patent 
putters ! ■" . . . 

Yet I misjudged him. I had seen only a bit of his life. 

The next morning the golfers went out to the links by 
train at an hour when the singer was probably still dozing 
in bed : slack and sad after emotional excitement. The 
golfers were alert as the gulls, rosy as the sun. The night 
with Christina Rossetti had left no more impression upon 
them than the Archbishop of Canterbury's rescript on the 
observance of Sunday. I entered their compartment, and 
sat among them, looking at the sea which the metals 
skirted, eager to talk, dubious about a subject, inclined to 
return, with a hint of scepticism, to the money spent on 
golf-balls per annum. Suddenly the 12 handicap man 
said : " Look at that old shag on the rock — see him ? I 
saw two seals there last Sunday. I watched them all the 
morning." 

The pleasure of the recollection made his hard, tanned 
fkce quite attractive. 

" Have you ever seen the Cornish chough ? " I asked. 



240 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

" Oh, yes, but they''re rare. I've watched them on the 
South Coast. You can tell a chough by its hoarse cry. 
The other day, walking along the beach, I heard a kind of 
croaking noise. No, it wasn't a chough ! The croaking 
came from beneath my feet. I removed some stones and 
there, a foot and a half beneath the surface, was a stormy 
petrel, sitting on its nest. No, the bird didn't lift the 
stones. It gains its nest by some kind of underground 
passage. . . . Look ! there's an oyster-catcher ! See him ? " 

An elderly gentleman in the corner, with a box of golf- 
balls upon his knees, mumbled something. 

" Oh, yes, there are rare birds in Cornwall. I've seen 
the golden oriole. Woodcock ? I've killed 125 woodcock 
in one season. There are plenty on Goonhilly Downs, by 
the Lizard. Hullo ! here we are." The train drew up 
at the golf station. I was left alone in the carriage — 
reflecting. 

In ten minutes I had learnt, from a golfer, more about 
Cornish birds than in all my days in the Duchy. What 
if Christina Rossetti bored him .? Why shouldn't she ''^ 
To which am I most in debt ? She aroused my emotions, 
he my interest. She took her heart in her hand, he his 
gun. I, who do neither, encounter them, look on, and 
enjoy both. 



THE GOD OF SLEEP 

rriHE small hours were hot and still. I could not sleep. 

-*- But the waking dream that obsessed me was soothing 

and continuous : it compensated for the loss of a summer 



THE GOD OF SLEEP 241 

night's oblivion. Through that long, conscious dream 
moved the white form of the god of Sleep that a Greek 
craftsman made 2000 years ago, the young Hypnos, 
striding delicately over the land, with averted head and 
enigmatic, smiling face, a swift-moving noiseless presence, 
closing the eyes of men, and hushing their quick brains. 
So individual is this statue of Hypnos that even in the 
crowded halls, white with casts, at the British Museum, 
where he takes his silent way, he seems to be alive and 
conscious of his beneficent mission, in the wilderness of 
craftsmen's dreams in plaster. 

The vision of Hypnos stayed with me until near sunrise, 
when a forlorn cow, in a meadow beneath my bed-room 
window, awoke to realise the loss of her calf, and announced 
her woe in a long-drawn-out plaint repeated at irregular, 
but frequent, intervals. Her grating moo of anguish 
drove Hypnos from my waking dreams. It was day. 
His spell of power was broken. Hypnos, who closes the tired 
eyes of men, rested till nightfall should entice him forth 
again. 

I left the house and climbed the hill — a long, steep 
ascent, where one may see all the world, as it were, ocean, 
moorland, and the distant downs, outstretched. For the 
idea of that white god, fleet of foot, gentle and compre- 
hending, still possessed me ; he was still more real than 
the presences of the living, and it was on that hilltop at 
sundown on the previous night that I had felt the nearness 
of the god. He came, as the sun dipped, at the hour 
when the long shadows creep over meadow and moor. 
From a long shadow, at that mystic hour, Hypnos glided 
stealthily, but with conscious grace, timidly, like one new 

Q 



242 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

to a world, with a secret mission. Born from a long 
shadow into a twilight, half golden — so I see Hypnos. 

He came to find a task awaiting him. For when the 
shadows began to lengthen a cavalcade appeared round the 
brow of the hill, three men following a van drawn by two 
horses, tandem-wise, and beneath the hill, above the sea, 
they stopped, drew a white tent from the van, which was 
a market cart covered with a green tarpaulin, and pitched 
their camp by a brook. I saw the smoke from their fire 
ascending in a thin spiral to the sky, and heard their 
laughter. 

The hour of the coming of Hypnos was near. He is 
never hurried, for all men need him, all welcome him 
sooner or later. Hypnos came, smiled on the weary, and 
passed on. 

The tent was silent when I reached it ; the fire was out ; 
I heard the regular breathing of the amateur gypsies. 
Hypnos had blessed them. 

Of Hypnos and the gypsies I thought as I climbed the 
hill that morning. The sun was in the heavens. The 
gypsies had been long astir. One was striking the camp, 
the others had mounted the horses, and were galloping to 
a farmhouse for butter and eggs and a pint of milk. The 
joy of life went with them. It was the hour of Pan. I 
could almost think I saw the goat-foot playing his pipes 
by the brook, footing it to a gay measure that jocund 
summer day. Hypnos was hiding, waiting for the long 
shadows. Nature was awake, forcible and joyous, tingling 
with life. 

Below in the bay a large steam yacht was moored 
against the jetty. Figures moved. White bodies 



A FLORENTINE LADY AND RAPHAEL 243 

glistened as they dived into the water, and the spray 
splashed over the white deck. One of the bathers, with 
a rope fastened round his waist, swam far out into the bay. 
Then he waved his hand ; a companion started the donkey- 
engine, and he came churning through the water back to 
the vessel's side. Again and again he swam out with the 
rope, and was flashed home in a welter of foam through 
the blue sea. I heard his laughter. The sides of Poseidon 
must have shaken with mirth at the antics of man that 
summer morning. 

And yet, joyful and inspiriting as was the sight, with 
the land sunlighted, a warm, fresh breeze playing over the 
hill, and the two horsemen racing back across the plain, 
leaving a trail of new milk on the herbage, I could not 
shake myself free from Hypnos, the silent bestower of the 
greatest blessing of all : 

" And Love it was the best of them, 
And Sleep worth all the rest of them.'''' 



A FLORENTINE LADY AND RAPHAEL 
rr^HE position of this alluring portrait of a Florentine 
-■- lady at the National Gallery is unique. No other 
work in the gallery is so honoured, merely because it is a 
double portrait rising and revolving from a pedestal. 

On one side a lady, on the other an angel. You can 
swing them round, and watch the light change the lady 
and the angel. 

The lady is more attractive than the angel. We have 



244 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

seen the type many a time in Florence, and art historians 
have given her a high-born name; but that does not 
matter. 

You will see this sweet, untroubled Florentine lady or 
her double often in Botticelli's pictures, and in Ghirlan- 
dajo's frescoes; now receiving gifts from the Graces, now 
paying a visit to the orderly bedroom on the occasion of 
the birth of John the Baptist. You will see her lurking 
in the enigmatic features of a Venus, a Flora, or a Spring ; 
for this was the type, some living woman, that the 
Florentine painters knew, admired, or loved, so that she 
has become fixed, immortalised, the ideal of a day, as 
Lady Hamilton became centuries later- 
She is no suffragist. She asked for nothing because she 
received everything. There are brilliants in the brown 
crimped hair that circles her pale, refined face. About 
her long neck is a pearl necklace, and silver braiding shows 
on the fading pink dress billowing above the elbow. Her 
face is in profile ; the lips parted, and I think when the 
painter saw her, she was gliding in her stately way along 
the corridor of her Florentine palace one night ; and as 
she moved the candles threw golden reflections on hair and 
jewels. When she passed a window, and her head was 
framed against the blue night, then the artist saw his 
picture ; so he painted her, brown curls against the blue 
twilight, and the parted lips which seem to be saying 
" Must I really stand quite still ? " 

It is not a great picture, perhaps the painting of the 
sleeve is the best part of it, and the name of the painter 
has not even been recorded. " School of Botticelli " is all 
the experts dare affirm ; but it is a lovable picture, and 




A FLORENTINE LADY AND RAPHAEL 245 

Florence and this daughter of the City by the Arno become 
very near again as I look at her. 

Turn the sweet, still head round a little on the swivel, 
and the Florentine lady is gazing towards the room where 
Francesco Guardi's Santa Maria della Salute towers 
above the Grand Canal. Not the opalescent mists of 
Turner's rainbow-hued dreams, but an actual Venice of 
clearly-defined architecture and moving, well-articulated 
gondola life, that this Florentine lady, born before the 
era of Impressionism, would perfectly understand. 

Turn her again and she will be looking demurely 
towards a Cavalier by Moroni, just such an attractive and 
enterprising stranger as must have hurried many a time 
from the city on the lagoons to woo this pale flower in her 
frowning Florentine palace. No diffident poet-man he. 

This cavalier by Moroni, who painted that tailor which 
some think is the frankest portrait in the National 
Gallery, is a man of arms and affairs. Fall-lipped, full- 
blooded, his sword at his side, he looks out upon the 
world his prey. The dark tunic slashed with gold suits 
his tanned face pulsing with life. Indeed, it is difficult to 
believe that this cavalier and the Florentine lady, so real 
they seem, have long, long ago gone the way of all valour 
and beauty. Man passes, the scene remains. Cavalier 
and lady have vanished ; but Venice is lovely still, lovelier 
than ever Guardi could make her. 

He * * * 4: 

I turn to the new Raphael. I pause — astonished. I 
ask myself: Can this beautiful picture, so tender in 
feeling, so subtle in line, really be a Raphael ? It is a 
privilege to be able to walk into the National Gallery at 



246 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

any moment and linger before this lovely Mother and 
Child, with the little landscape behind, and the faint 
tower that gives the name to the picture peeping forth. 
It has marks of the restorer and cleaner upon it; but 
neither they nor Time have impaired its beauty. It seems 
to have passed through a golden cloud, which has left on 
it a flush of tenderness obliterating all the hardness that 
we find in so many of Raphael's pictures. 

I have seen them all, or nearly all, and of the vast 
number this Madonna of the Tower is the one that 
makes the greatest appeal to me. Compare it with his 
harsh and hard St. Catherine of Alexandria that hangs 
close by, and you can see how wide a gulf there is between 
the achievements of a painter who does a thing to order, 
and for love. The Madonna of the Tower was painted in his 
Florentine period, before the gifted youth had become 
famous and the friend of Princes and Popes. 

Once it was the most treasured possession of the poet 
Rogers. That humdrum forgotten poet assumes a new 
interest, because he lived with this masterpiece and saw it 
daily. 



A HAPPY ARTIST 

rXlHE small drawing, signed John S. Sargent, fascinated 
me — so alive, so sensitive is this sketch of an elderly 
man with watchful eyes and a determined chin. It is an 
education to study the fret- work of lines making the lapel 
of the coat, the faint markings that build up the model- 
ling of the head, and the way the collar digs into the old 



A HAPPY ARTIST 247 

neck. There was no need to look at the superscription. 
Here to the life, drawn by his friend and enthusiastic 
admirer, is Hercules Brabazon Brabazon, who died two 
years ago at the ripe age of eighty-five. 

While I thought of Brabazon, and recalled his water- 
colours, those lovely expressions of his temperament, 
certain lines of Wordsworth's " Happy Warrior " 
drummed in my head : 

" Who comprehends Ms trust, and to the same 
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim. . . . 
Ajid, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law 
In calmness made, and sees what heforesaxv^'' 

Brabazon was spared the conflict of competition, of 
earning his living by his brush ; but there are other con- 
flicts in the interior life of the artist in which many are 
beaten. That Brabazon triumphed no one who passed an 
hour at the memorial exhibition of his works could doubt. 
He kept faithful with singleness of aim. 

Judging from the outside, I do not suppose any artist 
ever had a happier life. A country gentleman, rich, well- 
educated, for seventy years he did his duty as a landlord, 
and gave his leisure to the arts, and to travel, producing 
water-colours that were his personal impression of the 
beauty of the world. Why not call them letters that he 
wrote, for those who care to read, from Italy, from Spain, 
from Holland, from his own flower-garden at Oatlands ? 
When, on his travels, he saw a picture that impressed him, 
he made a water-colour interpretation, not a copy, of it, 
and so we have his beautiful suggestion of a little sea- 



248 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

piece after Bonnington ; of a princess after Velasquez ; of 
drawings and pictures after Turner. 

His early work shows that he began, as all must begin, 
by carefully drawing the forms of objects ; but as the 
years hastened, bringing with them increase of knowledge, 
he grew confident, fearless, and painted the effect, not 
the fact. Light and colour became the essence, the reason 
of his pictures ; he was content to suggest the construction 
of buildings and boats, with the same success as Mr. 
Sargent suggested the construction of the coat lapel. 

He passed his life working and enjoying, and at seventy, 
suddenly, his achievement became known outside his 
private circle. Those who understood, placed him at the 
head of his school. In 1891 he was elected a member of 
the new English Art Club, and at each of its exhibitions 
until he d'ied the Brabazon water-colours on the screen 
were among the joys of the collection. His fellow water- 
colourists bought his works, and ne of them said of a 
Brabazon water-colour : 

" Exquisite as a flower ; it is not like a thing that has 
been made ; it has grown." 

He died working and eager, seeking beauty and com- 
municating it, the perfect type of the Happy Artist. 



BROTHERS IN ART 

"XTES ; that lithograph called The Modeller is one of my 

prize possessions. When I look up from my desk, 

the intensity and intimacy of the representation is always 

an encouragement, more efficacious than a doctor's tonic. 



BROTHERS IN ART 249 

What does this lithograph contain? Merely a deal table, 
a bucket of water, a lump of modelling clay, a small 
Mercury dawning into life, and the figure of the 
modeller. He has been kneeling upon the floor, but in the 
ecstasy of creation he has half risen ; his body is tilted 
forward ; his forearms clutch the table ; and fingers, eyes, 
and brain are focussed upon the work that is being 
shaped from the clay. The great moment in an artist's 
life — the act of creation, the instant eternal — is suggested 
with an emotional vigour that is perhaps only possible in 
the subtleties of lithograph. Mr. Charles Shannon made 
it, and the figure of the Modeller can be none other than 
his comrade, Mr. Charles Ricketts. 

These two names are inseparable. Messrs. Shannon 
and Ricketts do not perform the amazing feat of painting 
pictures together in the way of Messrs. Henry and Hornel 
some years ago, but they live and work under the same 
roof, collect rare and beautiful things in consultation, and 
they often exhibit together. Like the brothers de Gon- 
court, they are " deux vies inseparees dans le plaisir, le 
labeur, la peine." 

At a recent exhibition Mr. Shannon showed ten large 
oil pictures. The motive of the winged Hermes toiling 
through the waves with wide-eyed Bacchus nestling on his 
shoulders he has also used as a lithograph. Realism is as 
alien to him as it was to Watts : the vision of his eye is 
resolved by his imagination and compounded into a sump- 
tuous decorative scheme. In his work, to-day is as yester- 
day, or as a thousand years ago. Even when he paints 
themes that are really of the hour, such as The Fisher- 
marCs Family or The Linen Bleachers^ they have no actu- 



250 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

ality. They are such things as a man, with a gift of 
pictorial vision, might see with closed eyes at nightfall, 
when the sights of daylight hours, and the memory of 
things read and heard, settle themselves in the mind. He 
is of those who paint the fourth dimension ; but few 
moderns have Mr. Shannon''s power of realising the quiet 
splendour of their dreams. 

The art of Mr. Ricketts is more dramatic, and his ener- 
gies cover a wider field. He knows the history of art better 
than many art historians ; he is a forceful and picturesque 
writer ; he designs stage scenery and effects, and he turns 
easily from painting to sculpture. His imagination plays 
in a world of fancy. He studies the horse, but it becomes 
a Centaur. The idea of that fabled beast, so pathetic, 
half-man, half-animal, intrigues him ; but he takes no 
interest in a Derby winner. Like the men of old time, his 
chief source of inspiration is the New Testament. In Tlie 
Holy Women he reaches, I think, the highest point of his 
rendering of drama and emotion. The colour scheme is 
blue. A great rock rises above the sepulchre. In the 
foreground are the shrouded, disconsolate women, but the 
eyes pass from them to the figure of the angel pointing 
upwards, and seemingly streaming skyward from the 
earth. It would be interesting to have the opinion of a 
foreigner on the art of this rainy island, whose knowledge 
of British art was derived entirely from these works by 
Messrs. Ricketts and Shannon — so significant and so un- 
British. 



A MINOR POET TALKS 251 



A MINOR POET TALKS 

" T/VTHAT do you know about Max Nordau ? ''' I asked 

" ^ the Minor Poet. 

"He is the Budapest Jeremiah; but Jeremiah with a 
bludgeon. He is often violent ; but I cannot think that 
the Eternal speaks through this Jeremiah. He is known 
as the author of ' Degeneration,' which tries to prove that 
workers in the arts who are not of the Max Nordau clan 
are degenerate and disserviceable to Nature's plan. I 
who Avrite poetry and make floral designs in the manner 
of Mr. Walter Crane : I who am fond of birds, and word- 
games, and who keep by my bedside a copy of ' Blessed be 
Drudgery,' am a degenerate." 

" What a shame ! But how about Max Nordau's new 
book ? " 

" I began by thinking it was very interesting ; but when 
the masterful author proceeded to whip and bludgeon 
artists whose vision he cannot or will not understand, the 
book began to annoy me ; all the more because Nordau is 
a strong man. He has a good brain, it works well, but 
his book suiFers from having been written in detachments 
for serial publication, and what the author thought about 
Art in June does not always agree with what he thinks in 
December. He is a man with a recurring grievance. I 
don't see the use of expressing your dislikes in art. It 
probably only means want of sympathy and lack of 
imagination. Indeed, I think criticism should only 
be interpretative and appreciative — constructive, not 
destructive. It is much more difficult to discover an 



^53 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

artist's intention, to follow the dim expression of his 
personality, than to hit him because his work seems 
antipathetic." 

" You have a lot of thoughts for a minor poet ? "" 

" I don't call them thoughts. I don't think I ever 
think. They're intuitions. What I mean is that when a 
man attacks what another man has written or said or 
painted, he seems to leave things just as they are. Of 
course, if he is witty, or if he has a fine command of 
language, I am titillated or impressed for the moment ; 
but nothing comes of it. But when a man writes from 
his heart, from a core of belief in something that is more 
than man, the deep, unvexed note he sounds endures. It 
remains with me, helps me to live, sounds through my 
days. Am I clear ? " 

" Not very ! " 

" That's often so. Well, look here ! I belong to a 
reading club. We meet once a month, and in turn declaim 
chosen passages. The other evening one member read 
portions of Milton's ' Areopagitica,' another read selections 
from Sir Thomas Browne's ' Religio Medici.' I am quite 
aware that the * Areopagitica ' is among the finest prose 
writings in the language ; but it left us wrangling about the 
definition of Truth, and the measure of Milton's sincerity. 
We should have quarrelled had not coffee appeared. The 
passages from the * Religio Medici ' left us with a vision 
of truth, a sort of grasp on Eternal things, which called 
forth no words, only a gratified silence. When I hear 
for the first time, quoted by Sir Thomas Browne, that 
*Light is the shade of God,' something is added to my life. 
When Max Nordau tells me that Rodin's Gate of Hell * is 
an illustration of hystero-epilepsy and feminine Sadism ' ; 



A MINOR POET TALKS 253 

that Puvis de Chavanne's ' great allegorical frescoes are 
cold, dead, sprawling, pretentious subtleties ' ; when he 
writes of ' toadies *■ and ' poison-boilers,' and refers to some 
' ass of a critic ' (that isn't pretty, is it ?), I want to get 
away from him, and feed my canaries and re-read that 
chapter in ' Modern Painters ' called ' Peace ' — ' though my 
hope may be as Veronese's, the dark -veiled. Veiled, not be- 
cause sorrowful, but because blind.' Or that passage 
where he apostrophises Turner, the light-giver. That's 
the kind of writing that nourishes me." 

" I trust you have not suffered from the critics ? " 
" Alas ! I have had my share. I have published one 
volume of poems. Perhaps you remember it. The title 
was ' The Morning Stars who were Too Shy to Shout for 
Joy.' One reader liked it unreservedly — my old nurse — 
who, thank God ! is still alive. Of my three critics, one 
wrote a facetious article to show how clever he was ; 
another quoted two of the poems, and put at the top ten 
lines of biographical italic from ' W^ho's Who,' but un- 
fortunately it was the life of another man, a mining 
engineer, whose surname and initials are the same as mine ; 
the third complained that my little bed of violets were not 
tuberoses. That is a common failing of criticism. You 
write as Smith, and the critic trounces you for not being 
Shelley. You express your gratitude to Claude Lorraine 
for his ' Enchanted Castle,' and the critic smothers you 
with abuse because you have not correlated Claude with 
Turner and Wilson. The editors of some learned journals 
seem to think that a man can only write well when he is 
suffering from diabetes or something. They distrust light- 
heartedness. Ah, well ! Tout casse^ totii passe, tout lasse ; 
Vamour seul est etemel.'''' 



254 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

" True, or perhaps I should say, ' Be that as it may.' 
Anyhow, we have wandered a little from Max Nordau. 
Is his book, ' On Art and Artists,' one that you would 
recommend ? " 

" In parts, yes. His opening chapter on ' The Social 
Mission of Art' has grit, and it is suggestive ; but he 
spoils himself for me when he speaks of the ' hateful and 
tedious reality of Bastien Lepage.' Fancy calling Bastien's 
Joan qf Arc hateful and tedious ! He is good on Meunier 
and Sisley. I admire the passage contrasting the poignancy 
of the figure of a woman, by Meunier, who has gone to the 
mouth of the shaft of a coal-mine after an accident, to find 
her man dead, with the ineffectuality of a second group 
Meunier made of the same subject, but with the dead man 
lying at her feet. The mere fact of the corpse being 
there, Nordau points out, checks the imagination and 
dries the tears. That's good criticism. And I admire 
the pages about Sisley, who does ' optically what an ear 
would do acoustically which was capable of feeling purely 
all the tones of a chromatic divided, perhaps, into sixty- 
fourths.'" 

" That sounds rather scientific." 

" Does it ? Max Nordau never forgets that he is a 
scientific philosopher of sorts ; but no one who was really 
scientific could publish in one volume so many contra- 
dictory opinions. Perhaps if he was very happy for 
a year, and discovered that people only yawn when he is 
violent, and if he wrote only about painters he likes, he 
might produce a book that aunts would buy in half- 
dozens to give away as Christmas presents. Some of his 
sentences are wonderfully fruitful in suggestion. His 



A BEAUTY BOOK 255 

picture of the original cave-man artist, who scratched the 
mammoth on the tusk to ease his emotional tension ; of 
the nameless craftsmen who tossed off those little lyrical 
poems — the Tanagra figures ; of the Netherlanders who 
made art a free " 

" Pardon me ! I hear the motor-bus. We have had a 
most interesting conversation." 

"Thank you. I have never met anybody before who 
seemed really anxious to hear what I had to say." 



A BEAUTY BOOK 

TT is a truism of the auction-room that the portrait of a 
-* pretty woman, by an esteemed master, is worth 
double or treble the price of a handsome man from the 
same brush. Nobody complains. We are all human, 
and it is a picture dealer's business to understand wealthy 
humanity. 

Of all painters who have been gifted with the power of 
transferring to canvas the vivacity, the charm, and the 
note of pathos in a beautiful face, of touching the strings 
of personality into melody, Gainsborough — the vivacious, 
the impulsive, the quick and generous Gainsborough — is 
unrivalled. His women are as fresh to-day as recurring 
springs. A typical Beauty Book could be made from his 
portraits alone. At this moment the streets of London 
ai'e brightened by the oval face set in auburn hair, with 
the blue eyes peeping side- ways, of his Mrs. Sheridan^ one 
of the lovely daughters of Linley, of Bath. Gainsborough 
painted her seated on a bank in a butterfly landscape, as 



256 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

if she had fluttered to the sward to rest a moment, a 
favourite device with him ; but the vandal with an eye for 
beauty who made the coloured reproduction has cut her 
off just below the blue sash. She is lovely still, although 
truncated. 

Esteeming Gainsborough and certain painters of the 
Italian Renaissance as the most alluring interpreters of 
the beauty of women, I took up Mrs. Steuart Erskine's 
volume called "Beautiful Women in History and Art," 
predisposed to praise. For, on the cover, a Gainsborough 
greets us, the buoyant, merry, bright-eyed Lady Mulgrave 
from the National Gallery. It is plain that Mrs. Erskine 
admires her, for Lady Mulgrave appears again on the 
title page, and a third time in the text. But when I turn 
to the first plate, containing engravings of Margaret 
Tudor, Queen of Scotland, Katherine of Aragon, Jane 
Seymour, and Mary Tudor, Queen of France, I realise 
how opinions as to what is beauty can differ. Catherine 
Howard has a page to herself; but nothing can ever 
persuade me that she is beautiful. Nor the Countess of 
Southampton (by Van Dyck), who looks like Nero; nor 
the wooden and phlegmatic Joan of Arc^ by Ingres. If 
one must introduce Joan of Arc into a gallery of beauties, 
the choice should have fallen upon the uncouth, inspired 
figure of Bastien Lepage. 

But I cannot but be grateful to Mrs. Erskine for 
including a portrait of Helene PotocJci, the pretty Polish 
girl who married Prince Charles de Ligne and left him 
for Count Vincent Potocki. She was married to Prince 
Charles from the convent at the age of sixteen : 

" She had seen him once in the Parlour, on which 



A BEAUTY BOOK 257 

occasion she had kept those beautiful liquid eyes fixed on 
the carpet, and had described him accurately to her 
companions afterwards." 

But charming as Helene with the liquid eyes is, the 
man who is not a hermit may see girls as pretty, a dozen 
in the week, in England of to-day, to say nothing of 
Ireland and Scotland. And as for Madame de Pompadour 
by La Tour, to whom a page is also given, a well-trained 
male eye would not throw her a second glance. La Tour 
could not paint her wit, or her manner. But Lady Jane 
Grey, by Lucas van Heere, is charming. She might have 
stepped out of a pre-Raphaelite picture by Millais. 

This volume should have included only the loveliness of 
faces as seen through the beauty-haunted eyes of such 
painters as Gainsborough, Romney, Botticelli. Their 
models may or may not have been beautiful in life, but 
they certainly became so when seen through the person- 
ality of the men who painted them. Why is not Botti- 
celli's Spring here ? and his Venus ? and that little head 
of an angel high up in the corner of his Coronation of the 
Virgin ? And Filippo Lippi's pouting, discontented, ador- 
able Madonna, and Ghirlandajo's Giovanna with the fair 
hair ; yes ! and Velasquez's Virgin, and Leonardo's inward- 
smiling woman ; and Perugino's pale Umbrian peasant 
girls, and Van Eyck's S. Barbara ? 

Why complain .'' The compilation of a Beauty Book, 
like an anthology, is a matter of personal taste. The 
faces portrayed are Mrs. Erskine's choice, and if I think that 
many of them would not have launched a thousand ships, 
that only shows that the author and the present writer 
disagree. The ideal of a friend of mine is Henrietta 

B 



258 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

Maria, and Sir Peter Lely was not the only man who ad- 
mired Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland. In this 
book she looks like Britannia on a penny. Perhaps she 
was pretty when she! smiled. 

But one may have opinions as to the form a Beauty 
Book should take. First, the pictures should all have a 
whole page allotted to them. Beauties should not be in 
bevies unless they are dancing at a music-hall. And they 
should not be printed in a heavy brown ink that makes 
Lady Hamilton as Nature look as ponderous as an iron 
girder. Second, the text of a Beauty Book should go 
with a lilt ; it should have gusto and be Elizabethan in 
its fervour ; should be glamoursome and fugitive as beauty ; 
in a word, should suggest the song of a lark rather than 
the solemnity of a historian. Mrs. Erskine takes the 
latter course, and as we are a prosaic nation, no doubt 
many readers will welcome her facts. But what have facts 
to do with beauty ? The model, I submit, should be Mr. 
Maurice Hewlett, whose prose, when he is writing of dead 
Florentine ladies, caresses them from afar. 



OCTOBER 



OCTOBER 



ANCIENT AND MODERN 

A S the train sped through Kent that golden day of 
-^^ late summer I saw that the outing of the poor 
was ending. Many of the hopfields were cleared, the 
poles standing bare in the sunshine, but here and there 
figures crouched dark amid the remaining greenery. So 
momentary was the sight of this remnant of hop-pickers, 
so remote and small they looked in the rolling landscape, 
that hop-picking seemed but a picturesque incident in the 
optical gathering-in of the day. Their figures were far 
away ; they had less individuality, as we flashed past them, 
than yonder herd of sheep nibbling their way over the 
down. Speeding through that golden land, it was with 
almost a shock that I recalled a sight of the previous 
night in Whitechapel — a wagon-load of returning hoppers, 
a boisterous, roysterous medley, packed on the floor of the 
van, the discord of whose songs was intensified by the 
creaking of the wagon-wheels. But that was in the past 
of yesterday ; the hoppers were now merely a tone, a value 
in the landscape, a flying blur, not a part of life. 

When we reached the marsh country, where innumeP' 
able animals graze by innumerable little streams, until 
their forms fade in the blend of sky and land at the far 
horizon, all thought of hop-pickers faded. For there, 
perched on her arable and wooded rock, was Winchelsea, 



262 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

very old, very content, very sleepy, and almost unchanged. 
A shop, the shop, has been pulled down and rebuilt else- 
where, and on the site has risen a white house, pretty as a 
flower, with linen curtains fluttering in the breeze like 
leaves. That was all. Winchelsea — she is really New 
Winchelsea, although she is 600 years old — was dozing 
as she has dozed every lazy summer since the stream of 
history left her. Empires may crumble ; hops may cease 
to be grown, the electro-bus may become common as a 
cab ; but ancient Winchelsea will never awake from her 
dream. Kings march through that dream, and armed 
hosts ; ships of war sail through it, and the spirits of 
queens stream palely. In her dream Winchelsea sees 
battle-grimed French and Spaniards scale her walls, and, 
without a tremor, she views herself going up to the 
heavens in smoke and flame. She sees Edward III. and 
the Black Prince, captaining the Winchelsea squadron, 
drive twenty-three Spanish galleons into her harbour. 
But what does it all matter now ? Nothing remains but 
her dream, the blue, un vexed sky, and the sea, her old 
companion and foe, which drowned Old Winchelsea, and 
ended her struggle for existence down there on the marsh? 
where Camber Castle sprawls and crumbles. 

I sit on the ramparts in the shade of a windmill that 
has long shirked work. I see, two miles away, the glint 
of the sea that once washed the walls of New Winchelsea. 
I gaze out upon ranging fields and corn-lands, sun-flushed 
brooks, innumerable animals, and uplands stretching away 
to the folds of the hills. All is spacious, still and pastoral 
as a landscape chapter in the Old Testament. I watch an 
automobile racing along the ribbon of white road, going 



ANCIENT AND MODERN 263 

somewhere, eager only to be there, so many miles on- 
ward, before nightfall. Winchelsea must smile at that 
ambition. She reminds me of the old lady in a railway 
carriage, who, after watching the antics of a party of 
children for some time, said gently : " Oh, my dears, if 
you only knew how much nicer it is to sit still ! " 

Winchelsea dozes, and there are no discordances in her 
dreams. She lives her own brooding life ; she demands 
nothing of the world, but she gives peace to those who 
ask. Like the early mystics and the stars, she is unlinked 
to companions; she seems to derive the beauty of her 
repose from some hidden source, and if a poet spoke a 
verse in the shade of the windmill on the ramparts, look- 
ing down upon the pastoral and onwards to infinity, I 
think he would say : 

" Sometimes on a sudden all seem^ clear. 
Hush ! hush, my Soul, the Secret draweth near, 
Yes ! Sometimes on the instant all seems plain. 
The simple sun could tell it, or the rain.''"' 

And, as the poet turned towards the railway station — 
for an end comes to all things — he might add : 

" / go ; Fate drives me : but I leave 
Half of my life with you."" 

Winchelsea would make no response. She is too tired 
to be pitiful, too ancient to be interested in the present. 
I doubt even if she knows that on certain afternoons small 
bare-legged children sit on three-legged stools in one of 
her cottages learning to make lace — Winchelsea lace. 



264 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

From Spanish galleons to pillow-lace ! What a drop ! 
But Winchelsea is too sleepy to care. 

On the long railway journey home I saw the ghostly 
hopfields stretched out under the light of the full moon- 
Once I sighted a fire where belated pickers were bivou- 
acking, and as the train < awdled at the station I realised 
that we were picking up detachments of home-returning 
hoppers. The guard locked the door of my carriage. 
" You don't want hoppers in here," he said. 

At London Bridge I tumbled into the midst of them. 
The platform was a pandemonium. I stood still waiting 
until the tangle had disengaged itself. Surrounding me 
was a family — a father without a hat, who looked like a 
stage burglar, a wife nursing a baby, and children of 
various sizes. One carried a small sister, another grasped 
a pail, a third clutched a kettle, and in their midst was a 
perambulator in which a wizened baby and an ailing child 
were tucked. It was plain that the perambulator served 
in lieu of a four-wheeled cab. Everything the family had 
taken upon its hop-picking jaunt was in turn piled into 
the perambulator, until the wizened baby and the ailing 
child were hidden under a mountain of impedimenta. 
They uttered no murmur of reproach : they were the 
youngest philosophers I have ever encountered. Indeed, 
had they protested no one would have heard them in the 
din of songs, shouting, and chaff. Every one was good 
humoured : the faces of these derelicts were sunburnt, and 
their eyes were bright. The hot, hatless father had cer- 
tainly indulged in beer, but he was in the genial stage, 
and he worked vociferously to bring his flock into line, 
and to mai'shal them towards the wicket-gate where a 



ANCIENT AND MODERN 265 

group of ticket-collectors and policemen strove to organise 
the surging mass, and to sift the ticket-holders from the 
others. I waited while a jovial sexagenarian strove to 
persuade the collector that he had given up his ticket to a 
gentleman in a peaked hat at New Cross. Then the per- 
ambulator was pushed with cheers through the barrier. 
I presume the father explained that his two extra tickets 
were for two children hidden under household utensils. 

At the end of the incline beyond the barrier the friends 
of the hoppers were waiting, and, as they recognised one 
another, shouts and jovial greetings were exchanged, sur- 
charged with a fire of twentieth-century argot that 
demands an appendix in the slang dictionary. From 
wonder I passed to amusement, and then to something 
that was neither wonder nor amusement. In brief, I 
turned faint. One loves the poor, or should love them, 
but to be enmeshed for a quarter of an hour in a crowd 
who have worked for a hot week, bathless, requires a 
strong physique. But the bathless are kind to those in 
distress. A path was pushed for me through the crowd, 
and I leaned miserably against the telephone box near the 
air. 

Presently feeling revived, I raised my face from my hands 
just as the family party were passing out. The father 
pulled the perambulator up short, eyed me genially, sym- 
pathetically, and said : " We've both 'ad a drop too much, 
guv-ner ! " 



^66 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 



EPISODES RECALLED 
UNEARTHED FROM PICCADILLY 
TDICCADILLY was blocked. We waited five minutes 
in the tangle of vehicles ; then the omnibuses and 
cabs began to crawl along the narrow passage that the 
road-breakers had left for London's traffic. Unearthed 
from the channel dug for the laying of more electric wires 
were certain strange-looking objects, caked with loam, 
that had been undisturbed for centuries. Now they rested 
by the roadside. Passengers upon the omnibuses craned 
their necks to look at them, and if tree trunks could 
blink, those battered trunks, so long lost, would have 
blinked in the sunshine. Through each a hole, the size 
of the mouth of a small pail, had been bored. Their 
particular service to man was obvious. Here, lying in 
Piccadilly, on an October afternoon, were the first conduit 
pipes that brought the water of the New River to London 
— just elm trunks, sound as the day they were fitted one 
into the other, and laid in the earth ready for the cool 
water to gush through them into old London. 

Americans, I was told, are buying them from the 
contractor. 

Had I my will I would send two of them down into 
Wales, to a valley, or rather a series of gigantic cups in 
the hills, through which a river runs. Some day, it is said, 
those cups in the valley will be converted into a vast 
reservoir which will supply London with water. And 
I would erect those two faithful elm trunks on a hill over- 
looking the reservoir. So the Old and the New would meet. 



EPISODES RECALLED 267 



THE PREACHER 

That remote part of wild Wales where I spent a few 
days last month is ten miles from a railway station, and 
because Welsh ponies are plentiful, one never walks. 
There are a dozen ponies in the paddock beyond my host's 
flower garden, but I could not canter up the hills alone, 
even if I wished, for Llewellyn I., my pony, would not 
permit himself to be caught unless Llewellyn II. was 
bridled at the same time. As the rider of Llewellyn II. 
is an intimate friend, the arrangement served. 

One day the rider of Llewellyn II. suggested that we 
should visit the Preacher. He lives high in the hills, and 
on Sunday he mounts his pony, prays and preaches in 
three chapels, many miles apart, and returns at nightfall 
to his desolate cottage. We walked the last mile to cool 
the ponies after their wild canter over the shoulder of the 
mountain, and Llewellyn I. pressed against his companion, 
warm flank to warm flank, as if saying, "We are old 
friends, you and I ! *" 

On a knoll in front of the Preacher's cottage we drew 
rein. I shivered at the thought of the loneliness of his 
life. Hills all around, the trees dripping rain, the miry 
roads desolate, the clouds leaden, and a wild river brawl- 
ing before his study window. There was his^ open Bible 
on the ledge. 

" How does he stand the monotony ? " I asked the rider 
of Llewellyn II. " Is it faith or fear that supports him ? " 

The rider of Llewellyn II. looked towards the cottage. 
"That Bible is to him the Word of God — every word. 



268 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

He lives to preach it. There is no monotony when all life 
is one great desire." 

A POOR MAN'S CURE 

The Welsh village has grown .into" an ugly town. 
Everything — houses, shops, inns — looks cheap and ugly, 
and the men who crowd the narrow, muddy streets are 
under-sized and ill-looking. They wear cloth caps. I 
wondered what could be the attraction of this inland 
straggling town, where nothing happens save the gleams of 
fair weather between the pitiless rains. 

Soon I found that twice a week the pale, under-sized men 
trooped out to a glade through which a river runs. There, 
in a wooden pump room, bare and comfortless, they drink 
the waters, hoping to be cured by saline, sulphur, chaly- 
beate, and faith. A servant-maid waits behind the 
counter of the pump room, and over all hangs the nauseat- 
ing odour of sulphur. 

The miners pay their copper and drink ; then they 
troop back to the ugly town, where they sleep four in a 
room for fourpence a night, cooking the provisions they 
have brought with them from their homes in the black 
Welsh mining country. 

I thought of Homburg, where the rich take the cure as 
an aftermath gaiety of the London season. Almost the 
only amusement provided at the Welsh Spa is a penny- 
in-the-slot machine. Stay ! I have heard that of an even- 
ing they form themselves into choirs, appoint conductors, 
and practise choral singing. 

Come to think of it, can Homburg offer anything better 
— to feel well and brisk, and to go bed ward singing ? 



EPISODES RECALLED 269 



THE SPORT OF KILLING 

He was a peaceable man, gentle in demeanour and per- 
suasive in conversation, who spent the mornings in his 
study and the afternoons playing croquet or gardening. 
Between whiles he managed his estate, and after spending 
a week with him, I felt that his was the ideal life of a 
country gentleman. It was pleasant to hear him discuss- 
ing the improvement of a farm with his agent, delightful 
to see him with his dogs. 

One afternoon, an hour before sunset, he threw down his 
croquet mallet and said suddenly : " I'm going to have a 
pop at a rabbit. Will you come ? " I did so, for, strange 
to say, I had never seen anything killed in the open, and I 
wondered how the sport would affect my friend, so gentle 
in demeanom" and so persuasive in conversation. 

It transformed him ; the primitive man leapt out with 
the quickness of the report of his own shot-gun. For an 
hour I followed him. He had one desire — to kill. Old 
and young alike he blazed at. One bunny he shot while 
it was sitting up as if pleading for mercy : another, badly 
wounded, escaped to its burrow and was killed when only 
its tail was visible. And his face grew fiery, and in his 
eyes there was the gleam that men have in battle when 
they meet the enemy. 

" Enough," I cried ; " Fm going home."" He tossed 
three rabbits to my feet. " You might take these with 
you,"" he cried with a laugh. They were still warm, and 
their blood dripped on the wild flowers and seemed to mock 
the quiet-coloured end of day. 



THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 



TRAMPS 

"l^TITH the first fog, the tramps who roam southern 
England during the summer and autumn months 
track into London and take up their winter quarters. 
Tramping the country they look cheerful ; scuffling 
through London streets they look miserable. One longs for 
the summer and their return to the life of the open road. 

I know not the numbers of these brown-faced, weather- 
beaten, shifty, sore-footed itinerants, but I do know that 
on the white marsh highways between Dover and Hastings 
never an hour passes but one meets a tanned and limping, 
palm-outstretched brother, eager for fraternity. 

That first ache of man for a roof, and belongings, is 
unknown to them. Carrying their goods, they solve the 
problem of the superfluity of possessions. They eat their 
infrequent, digestible meals by the roadside, and they 
experience the luxury of hunger. Blots on the green 
grass, they sleep where they fall, and awake ravenous. 
Where they pass the night they alone know ; probably the 
majority just tramp from one casual ward to another. 
They are never bored. Hourly to finger the trigger of 
collapse makes life an intense game. 

Last summer a lean, soldierly-looking tramp located me 
at the window of an inn in Winchelsea. 

" I ask your pardon," he said, '" but would you help an 
old chap, who''s spent his life in the stable, on his way ? " 

I made the retort of untempted virtue. 

Removing his hat he said, with an ingratiating smile, 
" Do I look like a man who drinks ? " 



TRAMPS 271 

He did not. He cost me a shilling, and we talked. 
This ex-stableman had the power of give and take, parry 
and ripost, in conversation, unusual in tramps, unpractised 
by two tatterdemalions I passed on the hill above Guest- 
ling Green. One was saying that his feet hurt him bad. 
The other replied, " Knock the nails down." The former, 
ignoring his companion''s contribution to the symposium, 
repeated his remark, and the other answered, " Knock 
the nails down." So, up the hill, the dialogue continued. 
Neither desired extraneous illumination. Tramping tends 
to individualism. 

That afternoon I was leaning on the wall at the end of 
Watchbell Street, Rye, gazing over the marsh, when a 
tramp slouched up the path from the river, plucked three 
inches of leather from his boot, borrowed some tobacco 
from an ancient rheumatic mariner in a newly washed 
smock, who was sunning himself on the wooden bench, 
and invited me to help an old chap on his way. 

« Whither ? " said I. 

"To Dover. Fm a docker, that's what I am, and I 
hope to get a job at Dover." 

" Why should I help you ? " I asked. 

Would you believe it — ^he apologised, and turned 
away. 

His charming manners cost me sixpence. 

Together we gazed out over the marsh towards Camber 
Castle. 

" Ifs what I call isolation," he said. " You know what I 
mean, it's isolated, all by itself as it were." 

He repeated the word, proud of it. "That castle is 
isolated, that's what it is, 'Tisn't like Pevensey. That's 



272 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

the oldest castle in England. Lemmesee, I passed it 
Sunday morning.*" 

My lips were moving with encouragement to make him 
continue when two more tramps panted up the hill, 
followed by a third, who carried a brown-paper parcel. 
He flung it open upon the ground, disclosing a muddle of 
skate, plaice, mackerel, eels, dog-fish, and so forth. 

" Bought 'em for a bob,"" he said, " down there," jerking 
his thumb to the river, where a steam trawler lay. " Now 
I'm going to share 'em. The Lord loveth a cheerful giver. 
What 'o ! Here you are." 

He dipped a great fist into the heap, and gave to each 
tramp a handful of the slimy things. " There," he said, 
" there's supper for you all. I'm not a mean man ; I'm the 
i oiliest fellow that ever sailed salt water." 

He focussed me, and held forth a dog-fish and a plaice. 
I edged away and withdrew, yet was sorry afterwards, for 
this altruist, who boasted of being the j oiliest man on salt 
water, who had blue eyes and grey hair, and compassion, 
might be worth knowing. 

By good luck I met him the next day in a third-class 
smoking carriage. Just before the train started he tumbled 
in and amazed the solemn occupants by asking if they 
objected to smoking. Receiving startled answers in the 
negative, he filled the remnant of a discoloured clay, 
removed his hat, scratched his head, rolled in his seat with 
most infectious laughter, and said : 

" Lord, Lord ! Won't the missis be glad ! Bill Bailey's 
comin' home to-night." 

I was just finishing my luncheon — the luncheon ordained 
by an arrogant railway company that times a train to 



TRAMPS 273 

start at 1.5. " You offered me two fish last night," I 
remarked. " May I offer you a sandwich this afternoon ? " 

He recognised me, slapped my knee heartily, thrust the 
sandwich into a huge mouth, and said, " You're a good 
'un, governor." 

It was difficult, in spite of his copious talk, to ascertain 
the precise troubles that troubled him so infinitesimally. 
He was a diver, I gathered, also a travelling showman ; 
also, on occasion, a tramp ; also a hawker ; but his latest 
appointment had been to some subordinate position on an 
unattached steam trawler, to which an accident had lately 
happened. 

" Ever done any trawling, captain ? No ? They wanted 
me to stay and look after the boat, offered me fifteen 
shillings a week. Not me ! Wasn't good enough. I've 
a wife and kid at Dover, and I've been away for a month. 
It's all right, mind you ; there's somebody there looking 
after her. Care ? Not I, so long as I can keep the old 
woman going. I'm all right ; I'm the j oiliest chap on salt 
water, or on land either. Ever done any trawling ? I'm 
not a superstitious man, but do you know" — here his 
voice sank to a whisper — " that the trawl can't pass a dead 
body. I've seen lots of 'em — scores of them. Lord! 
Lord!" 

He refilled his pipe and gazed around the compartment. 
Every eye at once fell upon book or newspaper. 

"Always reading," he said, "always reading. Well, 
well ! I give my sons a good eddication, and what do you 
think they did ? " His body shook with laughter, and his 
hand wrung his nose. " Why they both went for a soldier. 
Lord love me ! Thought I should die o' laughing. What's 

s 



274 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

the good of their eddication now, I say ? That's all right ; 
I'm always jolly, whatever happens. I'm going to sleep in 
a bed to-night, the first time for a month. Bill Bailey's 
come 'ome. What 'o! I've got a little kid at Dover; 
adopted her when the missis lost her baby. Thought she 
would have gone off her onion when the kid died. You 
know what women are. So I adopted this one. Look 
here — see ? " 

He drew from his coat pocket a rubber doll, then 
another, held them up, squeezed them, and attempted to 
make the figures dance upon the carriage seat. 

" Lord, what fun we'll have to-night, me and the missis 
and the kid. And, look here ! I've got something else." 
He fumbled in his side pockets, and produced two cups 
and two saucers, carefully wrapped in scraps of newspapers. 

" Look," he said ; " that's one for the missis and one for 
the kid. What 'o ! Bill Bailey's come 'ome. I'm the 
j oiliest chap that ever tramped Sussex. Look at me, not 
sixty, and grey as a badger. What's it matter ? I'm not 
afraid of work. There's my 'and. Does that look like 
the 'and of a man what's afraid of work ? " 

He thrust out a big, stained, grimy, raw, oily hand, 
and I was glad to grasp it. 

" Good old pal ! " he shouted ; " we'll 'ave a pot of beer 
at Ashford." 

^ H: 4: 4: 4: 

At Ashford I managed to evade him, and secluded 
myself in the London train. As we steamed from the 
station I was vouchsafed a last glimpse of him, in- 
viting the attention of a young clergyman to the rubber 
dolls. 



AN IMPRESSION OF OXFORD 275 

"I wish they squeaked," he was saying, and laughter 
wrinkled his jolly face. 



AN IMPRESSION OF OXFORD 

A N unseen clock chimed the quarter before six. I was 
"^^ early for the service in Magdalen College Chapel, 
so I wandered through the quadrangles, loitered in the 
dim cloisters, and invited the salient impressions of that 
day in Oxford to visualise themselves. Here, in this place 
of repose, and memories of Wolsey, Addison, and Gibbon, 
dominated by the Founders' Tower, where the Latin 
hymn is sung on May morning, the new and the old 
buildings united by the darkness, I was again conscious of 
the insistent impression that the stranger feels as he roams 
Oxford : the young life moving blithely against the grey 
and often peeling walls — ancestral buildings fostering 
infinite generations of children. You cannot escape the 
undergraduate. You do not wish to escape him. He is the 
butterfly of a day against an immemorial background. 
He is ubiquitous ; ever busy, ever lively. He dresses 
carelessly and roughly as for a country walk, all but his 
waistcoat, which is always almost outrageous. Yet there 
must be a dandy set. Else how explain the vivid scarlet 
socks and the rainbow dressing-go^vns in shop windows. 
The solemn night gloom of Magdalen cloisters shrouded 
all colour; but life persisted. Beyond the arches, now 
here, now there, figures flitted, their gowns blown out by 
the wind, their feet skirting the lawns (those wonderful 
Oxford lawns) ; above them the old trees, and everywhere 



276 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

the spirit of the place brooding in the secrecy of the 
night. To the last frontier of Empire, Alma Mater 
breathes her benedictions upon her sons, remaining as 
much a part of them as their childhood. And here am I, 
a stranger, trying to give an impression of Oxford in a 
page. Why, one college would overflow the space ; one 
Hall of portraits ; one wing of the Bodleian ; one room of 
the University Galleries ; one night at the Union ; one 
dinner in Hall, when the Eight, a little late, bounce in so 
vivid with vitality that they startle you like the shower of 
rockets at the end of Henley Week ; one sight of a piece 
of venerable and lovely tapestry (" It was given to the 
College by Henry VIII.,'^ remarked my informant 
casually) ; one grave Professor, with a European reputa- 
tion as a philosopher, seated at the High Table of his 
Hall at eight in the morning, solemnly checking the 
butter, milk, and bread bills of his undergraduates. 

The choir boys, a long, sinuous line of small figures in 
cap and gown, wind through the quadrangle into the 
chapel. I follow, am given a seat in the choir, and 
methodically count the fifty-four candles. The roof is 
dark, the picture over the altar is dim ; but above the 
faces of the choristers those candles flare. Canticles, 
psalms, the Amens even, take on a new meaning carolled 
by those young voices, with the rumble of the bass under- 
tone. The bodies of the boys fidgeted, their hands were 
not lily-white, but I heard the young-eyed cherubim 
choiring beneath the morning stars. " O sing unto the 
Lord a new song,"" ran the psalm of the day, and the song 
was new that night in old Oxford. 

It was a wrench to return to High Street, and to jump 



AN IMPRESSION OF CAMBRIDGE 277 

upon a tram-car ; but the full moon hung over Magdalen 
Tower. Those voices still sounded in my ears as the train 
rushed towards London. I could not easily shake off the 
memory of Oxford. When we stopped at Ealing I knew 
that at that moment a ver}' learned man was lecturing in 
his study on " Justin Martyr : His First Apology " ; when 
I picked my way through the bustling streets of London, 
Great Tom was pealing the curfew, and the College gates 
were swinging into their locks. 



AN IMPRESSION OF CAMBRIDGE 
fTlOWNS have personalities. Oxford has the aroma of 
crusted wine, but Cambridge — well, I can never evade 
the idea that there is water in her wine. Generations of 
Cambridge men will disagree heartily, but so it is. The 
word Oxford conjures a hundred pictures — lost causes, lost 
faiths, dreaming spires, dreaming poets, and a street — that 
is Oxford. The " High " is known all the world over. 
Who, not being a Cambridge man, has heard of King's 
Parade and Trumpington Street ? I have never been to 
Oxford without crossing Christ Church meadows to the 
river. In all my visits to Cambridge I have never once 
seen the University boat-houses. They are away some- 
where in the beyond, across the town ; but Cambridge has 
" the Backs "" and the loveliest interior — dare I say in the 
world ? — King's College Chapel. 

A map of Cambridge lies before me. The river, serpent- 
like, winds round two sides of the town, the head sprawl- 
ing on the flat country above Mill Pool, where the stream 



278 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

is called the Granta, the old name of the Cam. On one 
side of the neck of the serpent most of the colleges cluster ; 
across the river stretch the college gardens, meadows, and 
sports grounds, connected by bridges, and shadowed by 
great trees. Outlying from the old colleges are Newnham 
and Girton. The thick tail of the serpent, known as the 
Lower River, which curls round the north of the town 
above Jesus Green and Midsummer Common, is the scene 
of the boat-races. 

Thus I pictured Cambridge as the train rushed towards 
the fen country, and noted, as places to visit, Peterhouse 
the oldest college; Trinity the largest, and the Fitz- 
william Museum. 

The well-paved road, bordered by detached villas, lead- 
ing from the station was utterly foreign to the idea of a 
town renowned as the seat of an ancient University. It 
might have been Dulwich or Streatham, were it not for 
the hansom-cabs. Soon the monument to Hobson, carrier 
and benefactor to the University, proclaimed that this was 
Cambridge. To him the English language owes the phrase, 
"Hobson's choice""; to this good Hobson, about whom 
Milton wrote two poems. When he let hacks to the 
students, he made them take the steeds in rotation, and the 
students who wanted to pick and choose soon learnt that 
it was " this, or none." Hence " Hobson's choice," the 
origin of which is duly set forth in the " Dictionary of 
National Biography." 

Next I proposed to seek Trinity, but the gateway of 
Queens' invited. I wandered by the Tower where Erasmus 
lodged, through Cloister Court, and lo ! there was the 
wooden bridge spanning the Cam, and beyond shone the 



AN IMPRESSION OF CAMBRIDGE 279 

College grounds in sunlight. Through them I wandered, 
and just across the river saw rising from the smooth lawn 
the slim twin towers of King's College Chapel, with the 
nave enfolded between them, the glory of Cambridge and 
of some unknown architect who worked for Henry VI. and 
VII. A toy canal divides Queens'* from King's, so I had 
to retrace my steps and seek the chapel from the college 
grounds. The interior is a marvel of grace and symmetry. 
The clusters of slender columns which spring from the 
ground do not end abruptly with the roof, but spread out 
fan-like, as if the stone had flowered and stretched 
branches and blossoms to touch the branches and blossoms 
bending out and upwards from the other side. From the 
clustered pilasters emerge boldly the Tudor portcullis and 
rose. Whether you look at this perfect specimen of the 
Perpendicular style from the river, from the floor, from 
the King's Parade where the east end rises between twin 
towers, it is always beautiful. 

I spoke of it to a stranger at the luncheon-table, and 
asked him which was the best way to see the nest of 
colleges between King's and Magdalen. " Take a boat at 
Mill Pool," he answered promptly, " and row to John's." 

That little journey on the slow, winding river is a 
vision of essential Cambridge — calm, cloistral, and instinct 
with a sad and mellow beauty. The buildings of Queens', 
grey stone rising from green lawns, glide past; King's 
College Chapel towers above Clare; Trinity Hall stands 
modestly forth, then the bridge of vast Trinity comes in 
sight, and after a little, the Bridge of Sighs, which 
connects St. John's with the New Court. I landed on the 
lawn, returned through the Bridge of Sighs, wandered 



280 



THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 



about the ancient home of Ben Jonson and Wordsworth, 
and stood in the plum-red brick Second Court, which 
Ruskin said was the most perfect in the University. 
Then I roamed on to the King's Gateway of Trinity, and 
entered the Great Quadrangle. The sun was setting, and 
the fountain in the centre of the Quad seemed afire. In 
that fierce light the eye of fancy might imagine the forms 
of Byron and Macaulay, Tennyson and Thackeray. In 
the Library the eye of fact can look upon the manuscript 
of " Lycidas " and " Comus," and the first sketch of 
" Paradise Lost.'' 

In Trinity Street the life of modern Cambridge passed 
briskly. There were motor-cars and motor-bicycles, and 
undergraduates walking in pairs. The Cambridge taste 
in waistcoats is less aggressive than that of Oxford ; but 
the coat and trousers law is Draconian. The coat must 
be a Norfolk jacket, and always of a different material 
from the trousers. The trend of opinion, judging from 
the subjects of forthcoming debates posted in two of the 
colleges, is advanced. One was : 

That this House would welcome the separation of 
Church and State in this country. 



The other was : 

That in the opinion of this House the Battle 
Waterloo was not won on the playing-fields of Eton. 



of 



I missed the express back to London, and was told by 
the porter that I must wait an hour for the slow train. 
His voice ceased. There was a moment's pause. I 
waited. But neither of us said, " It's Hobson's choice." 



ETHICAL ART 281 



ETHICAL ART 
A DISTINGUISHED ci-itic of literature, winnowing 
the true meaning of the word " adventurers "" from 
the false, remarked, " It is an adventure — an immense 
adventure — for me to write this little article." To enter 
an artist's studio, to see on walls and easels the work he 
has been preparing, through many months, for an exhibi- 
tion, and to realise in those first few, fresh moments of 
quick comprehension the quality and trend of his person- 
ality is also, to the critic of art, an adventure, possibly an 
immense adventure. One morning I knocked at the door 
of the gaunt studio where Mr. Cay ley Robinson was work- 
ing eight hours a day. 

The pictures that I saw in that first impressionist 
glance round the walls told me that the author of them 
was one of those inward-looking brooders, seeing things 
sympathetically in soft neutral shades, living their own 
interior life, not minding much whether they are in the 
twentieth century or the fifteenth. The pictures were 
small, wrought carefully and minutely, recalling the pre- 
Raphaelite days of Rossetti and Millais, not in the least 
reflecting the vivid, ever-shifting present of Mancini and 
Zuloaga. They were grouped temporarily in sections, 
under such general titles as Night, Mariners, A Winter 
Evening, The Little Child Found. 

Under the first section I saw a small drawing of a star- 
sown sky. Beneath, seated on the ground, silent, motion- 
less, gazing up in rapt and reverent wonder, were three 
figures clad in Eastern robes, possibly Chaldaeans, express- 



282 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

ing that emotion of dumb wonder before the mysterious 
laws of the universe that unites all the centuries, the last 
with the first. 

In the tempera painting, Mariners, I saw an old seaman, 
the personification of those who, from age to age, go 
down to the sea and conquer her, salt-encrusted, his beard 
blown by the wind, his keen eyes peering ahead, while he 
steers the boat with firm hands. He knows the seaman's 
craft, he typifies ripeness, a life that the world has 
fashioned into a hardy fearlessness; while the young 
sailor by his side, a bandage round his head, anxiety if 
not fear in his eyes, personifies youth that has still to 
learn that dangers are born but to be overcome, and that the 
nettle of life can best be conquered by grasping it firmly. 
Close by was a picture representing the idea of labour, 
three men in heroic attitudes taking in ballast, while a 
fourth stoops to lift a bale from the ground. 

Under the section, A Winter Evening, my attention, 
pleased, soothed, wandered from one small subject to 
another ; but the general idea was the light of fading day 
mingling with firelight in rooms, delicately felt, with 
grave, sweet women pausing in that hour that is made for 
reflection, or preparing the evening meal for children who 
are tired and ready for bed. The forms are all peaceful, 
the lines of the figures unemotional, the furniture and the 
objects in the rooms all beautiful and austere, without a 
fleck of modernity. The idea of The Little Child Found 
is implied in the title. In one drawing it is a small 
Roman child, in another a child found in a London street 
by a London policeman, but the idea is always the same, 
a helpless creature lost, found, restored. The past and 



ETHICAL ART 28S 

the present are one to Mr. Cay ley Robinson. He sees 
the simple, elemental motives that move the human heart 
and mind, motives that are the same in all climes and 
ages. Wonder, endurance, labour, joy are his themes, 
and in the picture called Dazvn, formally and archaically 
beautiful, he suggests the restlessness of man, who must 
ever be moving on to new pastures. They push off in the 
grey morning from the old dwelling, and as they leave the 
shores of this Cay ley -Robinson land that lies east of the 
sun, and west of the moon, the lantern lights them over 
the water. 

So it becomes plain that Mr. Cayley Robinson allies 
painting Avith literary and ethical ideas. He is not in the 
least affected by the anathemas that have been hurled at 
the conjunction. Cloistral, maimered at times, lapsing 
occasionally into forms that lean to the bizarre, he has 
the distinction of being quite himself. His work touches 
the imagination ; it arouses interest ; it expresses a talent 
that is always striving to relate, by means of the paint- 
brush, man's ethical and emotional contribution to the 
world that he sees with the inner eye. It is not the 
business of the critic to say to the artist, " Be this or 
that ; do this, or that." The artist, looking, according 
to his light on life, gives us news of what he sees through 
his personality. We do not say to Velasquez, " Be like 
Smith," or to Smith, " Be like Velasquez." We take the 
manuscripts they write for us, study the caligraphy, the 
style, the method, the colour — above all, the news they 
give — ^judge, and then receive them, in part or in whole. 
Life is so large and complex that there is room for all — 
the optimism of Browning, the loveliness of Keats, the 



284 



THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 



organ notes of Milton, the dreams of the dreamer — some- 
times inspired, sometimes half-realised — and the fugitive 
misery of the minor poets. 

We are none of us original. The fingers of the great 
ones of the past are always stretching dimly out and 
pressing our brains. All we can expect is that a time 
may come in our lives when, having passed from the more 
active influences of the Masters who have formed us, we 
" find ourselves," and add our spark of originality to the 
glowing fire. 



THE MISSING WORD 

"lyrR. ALBERT ABENDSCHEIN is tired : he is now 
resting, "somewhat spent by the wayside."" But 
the "lifelong technical thorn"" is no longer in his side. 
He has discovered the secret of the Old Masters. The 
thorn is out ; but twenty-five years of labour went to the 
extracting of it. Now, glad but panting, he points the 
way whither " the Masters have gone over the horizon." 
Fortunate Mr. Abendschein ! He has discovered their 
secret. In a little book, wherein labour is spelt "labor," 
and centre becomes " center," he offers his discovery to the 
world at the absurd price of four-and-sixpence. How 
many things we owe to America ! 

Lest there be any who were unaware that the Old 
Masters had any secret except the brains with which they 
mixed their colours, knowledge of their craft, and trade 
methods handed down from master to pupil, I now ex- 
plain what Mr. A. Abendschein means by the secret. 



THE MISSING WORD 285 

Certain old pictures, chiefly Venetian and Dutch, have 
kept their colour and luminosity. They seem to be as 
fresh as the day on which they were finished. Others, 
painted long afterwards, have cracked, gone yellow, black- 
ened, and bubbled. Examples will occur to every reader. 
The water in Turner's early Buttermere Lake, now at 
Exeter, has evaporated ; Leighton's Last Watch of Hero, 
at Manchester, has gone into half-mourning; Professor 
Legros can study the deterioration of one of his large 
pictures at South Kensington ; Sir Joshua Reynolds has 
suffered with lesser folk. The frescoes in Oxford Union 
have softly and silently vanished away. Mr. Abendschein 
claims to have discovered why certain pictures of the OI4 
Masters have remained to gratify mankind. He hopes 
"that great mass of new blood," meaning eager art- 
workers, will profit by his book. 

There is a story told of a millionaire with artistic tastes 
who was determined to discover the secret of the Old 
Masters. He bought a Titian for d6'50,000, and proceeded 
to peel the masterpiece in the cause of modern artists. 
Imagine his delight and excitement when he discovered 
beneath the Bacchus an underlay of a silvery tint, and 
beneath that a red foundation upon which the design was 
incised. Breathlessly he removed it, and disclosed a full- 
length portrait of George III. ! 

No such bitter experience befell Mr. Abendschein. His 
way is that of the patient chemist rather than the im- 
patient millionaire. He is learned in mediums, grounds, 
and varnishes, and he knows, as all know, that the ten- 
dency of oil is to darken and yellow. Every artist is an 
experimenter, and every practitioner has a different theory 



286 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

about grounds, pigment laying, oils, and varnishes, owing 
to the curious fact that the craft is not taught in the 
schools. We learn to di-aw, and our paintings of the 
model are criticised ; but the student must fend for him- 
self as to methods. In the old days a pupil worked in 
the studio of his master, ground the colours, prepared 
the grounds, and painted replicas on which the Master 
laid the touches that give life. So he learned the 
secret, to the discovering of which Mr. Albert Abend - 
schein, artist and benefactor, has given twenty -five 
years. 

Here a question of conscience arises. Ought I to reveal 
the secret, which is so simple ? It could go into one page 
of the book. Indeed, it might be betrayed in one word. 
For 146 pages Mr. Abendschein plays with the subject 
learnedly, simply, but exasperatingly. For we want to 
know ! We want that word ! 

On page 146 there is a hint of an after-process that 
takes from oil its power to darken. The oil must be ex- 
tracted from the first painting, that dead colour used by 
the Venetians as a basis for their after-glazes and veils of 
paint. How did they dry or bleach that dead colour.? 

Merely with . Guess the missing word. It is a very 

cheap commodity. Using it, Mr. Abendschein assures us 
that success attended "nearly" all his experiments. I 
like not that word " nearly."" 

Chapter XI., which follows, is a paean of triumph. 
Having learnt the secret, Mr. Abendschein sought for 
corroboration in the works of the Old Masters — and found 
it. If you want a thing very badly (not something that 
can be bought in a shop), you always find it. 



THE MISSING WORD 287 

Titian wrote from Venice saying that before dispatch- 
ing certain pictures to the Town Hall of Brescia, they 

must first be exposed in the . The wily Rubens had 

" enclosed places " for the treatment. Giorgio Vasari 
begged that his portrait of Pope Paul III. should be dried 

in . I wish that Mr. Abendschein had quoted some 

corroborative evidence from the Old Dutchmen, some of 
whose pictures are as fresh and luminous and as ageless 
as their own skies. They were good workmen ; they 
knew their craft ; they worked slowly and well. Most 
modern painters are in a breathless hurry. 

But it is a scurvy custom to look a gift horse in the 
mouth. Mr. Abendschein has laboured for twenty-five 
years. Now he lies "somewhat spent by the wayside." 
What can we do for the revealer of the Secret ? A Nobel 
prize occurs to me. It is a fine morning ; I go out into 
the to consider. 



NOVEMBER 



NOVEMBER 



A PHOTOGRAPH AND A VOLCANO 
X STIR the fire, close the curtains, and withdraw the 
large photograph from its portfolio. It is the head, 
in relief, of a woman with closed eyes, affixed to an 
oval slab. She has experienced terrible things, and 
the memory of her agony troubles her dieams ; but 
the indomitable face has not been conquered by suffering. 
It is in a state of transition to something finer and rare. 
This immortal mortal will awake, and the horror of the 
past will have been but the prelude to a new life. 

Beneath the photograph are the words " Furia Addor- 
mentata." So she remains, more than two thousand years 
after the craftsman carved his dream in Pentelic marble — 
a Sleeping Fury. Who was the craftsman ? No one 
knows. Did he fashion her a body and limbs ? No one 
knows. Maimed yet complete, she is a survival from the 
first half of the second century B.C. Her history is un- 
recorded. Perhaps she was hidden for hundreds of years 
in the earth, till the day of her recovery when she was 
placed among the treasures of the Villa Ludovisi. Came 
a time when modern Rome needed the Villa and the 
grounds for new streets and a new quarter ; so the Villa 
Ludovisi was hustled away and the Sleeping Fury was 
removed to the peace of a little room by the cloister of the 
Museo delle Terme in Rome. 



292 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

Her name ? That was lost in the centuries, but some 
learned antiquary of insight, remembering ^schylus and 
the myth of the awful Erinnyes and the benign Eumenides, 
called her, he being a Roman, " Furia Addormentata." 

What we know of Greek mythology from delving into 
books, the craftsman who carved this head learnt, maybe, 
from his mother, as we absorb fairy tales and the idea 
of God. Perhaps to him the Agamemnon^ the Chocephori, 
and the Eumenides of ^Eschylus were as real as Shake- 
speare should be to us ; perhaps he had long pondered the 
old myth telling how after the acquittal of Orestes the 
avenging Erinnyes, frightful winged women with serpent- 
twined hair and eyes dropping blood, became changed into 
the Eumenides, the well-meaning, the soothed and benign 
goddesses, guardians of Attica, symbols of the new spirit 
of justice, who were bidden to a shrine beneath the 
Areopagus ; perhaps this nameless craftsman, knowing 
and loving the myth, carved this head to show the transi- 
tion, while sleeping, of the Erinnyes into the Eumenides 
— vengeance into justice. It is metamorphosis made 
marble. The snakes of her hair are changing to tresses, 
agony to repose, contempt to compassion, wildness to 
wisdom. 

I replace the photograph within its portfolio. 
The day I first saw the original of the photograph 
comes back to me. I had been in Greece — Greece in the 
spring — flowers, a cloudless sky, blue waters, and infinite 
distances. I had stood for the last time on the Acropolis* 
looking down upon the cleft in the Areopagus, which 
tradition indicates as the shrine of the Eumenides. Then 
I bade good-bye to Greece, and all the way to Brindisi, 



A PHOTOGRAPH AND A VOLCANO 293 

three days of sunshine and warm, spring airs, the vanished 
life in art and ethics of that perfected people kept me 
company. The dream lasted through a sunrise at 
Brindisi ; but soon the train rushed into a pall of noisome 
dust, and the sun and the memory of Greece vanished. 
The land was powdered with that horrible lava ; the leaves 
of the trees sank beneath its weight, the station roofs 
were inches deep in it, although we were hours away from 
Naples. I remember trains caked in lava dust, standing 
in rows on sidings, peasants stretching from the carriage 
windows shrieking, weeping, shaking their fists at the 
poison-heavy sky in which the fiery cone of Vesuvius was 
hidden. Greece was merely a bright memory. Art was 
something in a past life. The terror of annihilation was 
upon southern Italy. I fled to Rome. 

The sense of calamity haunted me the next morning. 
I was in no mood for crowds and sights. So I strolled 
through the doorway of the Museo delle Terme and into 
the grounds of the deposed Carthusian Convent that 
Michael Angelo adapted from the buildings of the Baths 
of Diocletian, wandered by the cypress trees that he 
planted, and seated myself within sound of the fountain. 
The menace of Vesuvius had gone, the quiet joy of Greece 
returned. 

The garden is surrounded by the cloisters that Michael 
Angelo designed, and when the noon sun became too 
powerful I strolled towards their shade, and tui-ned, by 
chance, into one of the small rooms. There, on the wall, 
was the Greek craftsman's dream, metamorphosis in 
marble, a Fury sleeping, who will awake to peace, her 
anger gone, her eyes clear. 



294 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 



EDUCATION 

^HE was one of those old ladies of whom you say, 
thinking of Whistler's portrait of his mother : " How 
beautifully she would paint ! " Her son was by way 
of being a notable person, and on Sunday afternoons, in 
his wife's well-lit and well-warmed drawing-room, men 
and women who thought they had something to say, and 
were in the habit of saying it, would foregather. They 
were malcontents, altruistic busybodies, with views about 
everything, especially education, and the naughtiness of 
Great Britain. But Education was the enduring topic of 
conversation. I listened with lapses of interest and 
accesses of irritation, but I continued to spend my Sunday 
afternoons in that drawing-room, for the sake of that old 
lady who, in her white cap and black silk gown, sat so 
quietly in the corner of the couch by the fireside. She 
was a wonderful listener. Nothing escaped her. On that 
kind, intelligent face, comprehension and charity played 
like a flame. She was patient with fools, courteous to 
extravagance, encouraging to modesty and sincerity, and 
a lamp to wisdom, I always knew she was in the room, 
and always watched for her eloquent, wordless commentary 
on the talk. The others chattered about Education ; she 
showed its soul working unceasingly in a fine nature, 
ripening it, informing it with tolerance and a charity that 
never failed. 

Sometimes she spoke, and when she spoke she always 
used the right word ; not the effective word or the as- 



EDUCATION 295 

tonishing word, but the right word ; never the easy word. 
It was sometimes the word that the dictionaries mark 
" obsolete,"" but it was always the fit word. It was the 
word that Milton would have used. 

She had beautiful manners. For everybody she had a 
smile, and I am sure that each man interpreted that smile 
as meaning " I am very glad to see you." I did, and was 
conscious of the effort I made not to say anything cheap 
or insincere in her presence. In her quiet way, and quite 
unconsciously, she gave tone to those afternoons ; she was 
the General, under whose watchful eye the troops strove. 
Sometimes her intense but unobtrusive spiritual watch- 
fulness seemed to me the embodiment of George Eliot's 
invisible Teacher. 

The others argued the theories of Education threadbare, 
and strove with each other on the religious " problem."" 
She showed in her frail self what Education was. I 
wondered who had taught her. 

The day came when I understood. We were alone, and 
she told me, not knowing how much I wanted to know. 
As a child, as a little girl, as an older girl, it had been her 
custom to sit every evening on her father''s knee while he 
read some wise book. As a little girl she would read a 
sentence, and then fall asleep on his shoulder. As she 
grew older she read a little more, and when she did 
not understand, she would place a small finger on the 
page, and her father would explain. So it went on 
till they were able to read together, he still explaining, 
she growing in understanding under his tutelage. And 
when he died she was old enough to read and think 
alone. 



296 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

But he did not die. And she will not die, although 
she is very old. 



A JOURNEY ON THE THAMES 
rpHINKING of that vision of blue loveliness — Whistler's 
Old Batter sea Bridge nocturne — that shimmers 
upon a wall in one of the rooms of the National Gallery 
of British Art, I came out upon the Chelsea Embank- 
ment. Before me flowed the old grey river — London's 
ancient, spacious, dirty highway — speckled with refuse, 
bearing on her toy-waves bits of cork and fragments of 
spars. I leaned against ugly but useful new Battersea 
Bridge that no artist paints. A policeman was stamping 
warmth into his feet. 

" This is not old Battersea bridge that Whistler 
painted," said 1. 

He regarded me as if I were an importunate child. 
" Old Battersea Bridge was pulled down in 1890," said he, 
and turned to frown at a milk cart. 

I descended to the Carlyle pier, and waited (the 
derelicts were running then) for the L.C.C. steamboat. The 
mist was already beginning to disguise Battersea Park. 
Three passengers shivered on the pier. There was a moist 
nip in the air, and a cutting wind. Leaden clouds hid the 
sun, and although it was still two hours to sundown, lights 
were glimmering in many windows. Pedestrians walked 
briskly, muffled up. London was meeting the winter half- 
way. The officials were sad and civil like Malvolio, con- 
scious that the shadow of adversity was imminent. They 



A JOURNEY ON THE THAMES 297 

knew that London was demanding the withdrawal of the 
unremunerative service during the winter months. 

I waited for the boat and visualised, on the grey, damp 
day dying on the grey swollen river, the vision of blue loveli- 
ness that the master had suggested upon a small canvas — a 
perfect moment made eternal. His blue and gold noc- 
turne hung, like a fairy mirage, between me and three 
laden barges moving somewhere through the mist. 

With difficulty the King Alfred came alongside. I 
embarked for Blackfriars. 

We, the few Londoners who chose to travel to our 
destination by water, stood upon the deck, silent, cold 
figures, and I wondered whether London would flock to 
this winter highway if the boats contained large, spacious, 
warm and cosy cabins, such as the Rhine steamers pro- 
vide. I peeped below. Ugh ! Linoleum, marble-topped 
tables — and desolation. " Now, if this were an express 
boat," I soliloquised, " darting to Blackfriars, I should 

not mind standing on deck for " " All change ! " 

shouted the skipper. It was too cold to complain. We 
changed at Cadogan Pier, and embarked upon the 
Chaucer. 

I had read that in each boat is a tablet upon which 
is inscribed a commemorative appreciation of the great 
Londoner whose name she bears, with perhaps a snatch 
from his works. It would be pleasant to read Chaucer''s 
" O Yonge Fresshe Folkes." I peered about, but found 
no tablet. I descended. The solitary occupant of the 
cabin was a jolly mate engaged in clerical work. Him 
I interrogated. " I have heard," said he, " as some of 
the boats has tablets ; but there's none here." 



298 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

Shouts from above hurried me on deck. We were 
drawing near Nine Elms, and the pier-master was asking 
down the wind if any passenger wished to land. Why ? 
Where is Nine Elms ? What do you do when you are 
marooned at Nine Elms ? 

The mist grew denser and more fantastic. Banks and 
buildings seemed scenery in a Maeterlinck play, and the 
bridges looked like causeways of giants in a twilight land. 
Approaching one we eased in mid-stream to permit the 
tug Fm-y to race past, panting, low in the water, 
impatient of the huge vessel she was drawing. She 
was followed by the Charles Lamb L.C.C. steamer. Very 
forlorn looked the Charles Lamh. Elia liked company. 

Abreast of Westminster the sun gleamed out, and I saw 
another black tug with her white charge against the 
sunset. It was but for a moment, but in that moment 
there flashed before me the vision that Turner had, when 
he immortalised The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her 
Berth at Rotherhithe to he Broken Up. That magnifi- 
cent picture, with all its memories, rose before me, and I 
visualised, against the dim towers of Westminister, Turner's 
sunset on the Thames, red mounting into yellow, the 
black tug, and the stately ship that fought under Nelson 
at Trafalgar. 

We steamed through London, and on the stone arch- 
way above the Temple Pier my eyes met that colossal 
head of Neptune — smiling, knowing, discoloured — carved 
in stone, watching Thames. We passed Somerset House, 
and at dingy Blackfriars I landed, feeling like one who 
steps into a new country. It seemed strange to enter a 
tea shop ; but the warmth was agreeable. 



A HOUSE IN RED LION SQUARE 299 

Yes ; the voyage was worth twopence. I had been in 
touch with those who go down to the sea in ships. I had 
caught at the emotion that the poet felt when he sang : 

" Sweet is the scent of Baltic wood, of oak and teak 

and pine. 
The tarry smell of oozing decks when blazing on the 

line ; 
Give me a ship, a long, long ship, with raking masts 

sky-high. 
And one lone star swung overhead will do to steer her 

hyr 

And I had recaptured, seeing them on the grey day, 
visions of the eternity of art that were not soon to fade : 
at the beginning of my j ourney the waft of blue loveliness 
that a few devoted lovers of art gave a year or two ago to the 
nation ; beyond, by Rotherhithe, the splendour of Turner's 
sunset picture ; and midway that smiling, knowing, dis- 
coloured head of Neptune, carved in stone, watching 
Thames. 



A HOUSE IN RED LION SQUARE 

" XT is the first of the many squares, or breathing- 
places, that stretch westward from the City," said 
the Man who Knows his London. " Stand with your back 
to the boundary-wall of Gray's Inn, and step out towards 
the setting sun. But why do you want to see Red Lion 
Square ? " 



300 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

That was my secret. 

About six o''clock on a sombre November evening, an 
hour foggy and chill, I backed against the boundary wall 
of Gray's Inn, and wondered where the sun was wont to 
set. A milk-cart rattled past. "Where's Red Lion 
Square?" I shouted. Through the fog cut the answer. 
" Follow your nose along the passages, and you're in it." 
Half-way through Red Lion Passage, I remembered it was 
here, at a shop, " dirty and full of account-books," that 
Rossetti gave the order for the scrap-book that was so late 
in delivery. Suddenly I emerged into Red Lion Square — - 
a little tarnished breathing- place, with tall sooty trees, 
hard seats, and greenless evergreens ! — and sought No. 17. 

There it was, dim and discoloured, a tired private 
house, crouching between a prosperous sponge warehouse 
and an alert agency for addressing envelopes. A light 
burned faintly in the memorable first floor, the inspiration 
of many pages in many books. Yes : there was the tall 
centre window, facing north, heightened to the ceiling to 
adapt it for use as a studio ; and within, whither I 
penetrated, were the old panelled walls, and the wide 
staircase, up which skipped, fifty years ago, William 
Morris, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown ; where 
plodded Red Lion Mary, the serving-maid of genius, whose 
deeds are told in books, and whose face is perpetuated as 
one of the attendants in Rossetti's Meeting of Dante and 
Beatrice in Florence. Ruskin, their " hero," came here, 
too, to the delight of the coterie^ every Thursday. " Isn't 
that like a dream ? " wrote Burne-Jones. " Think of 
knowing Ruskin like an equal ! " 

But I could not see the interior of the large room on 



A HOUSE IN RED LION SQUARE 301 

the first floor where Morris and Burne- Jones Jived ; where 
Rossetti sat painting before his clouded days, for ever 
humming a tune, or crooning lines of poetry. "It is 
occupied by an old gentleman who is very ill,"" said the 
housekeeper. "You are quite right. Mr. Morris lived 
here with somebody else, whose name I have forgotten. 
It's a beautiful large room,"" she added. " You could turn 
a carriage and pair in it."" 

That large first-floor room is a room of memories and 
of significant interest. There the modern movement in 
decoration, handicraft, and the love of lovely colours 
originated. There William Morris — poet, artist, manu- 
facturer, socialist, author of "The Earthly Paradise," 
who, as a boy of seventeen, had settled down upon a seat 
of the Exhibition of 1851, declining to see anything more 
because everything was so " wonderfully ugly,"" made 
concrete his dreams of making modern life beautiful, and 
set the seal of his personality upon the world. 

It began, like all great movements, quite simply. That 
first floor was unfurnished when Morris and Burne-Jones 
engaged the flat in the year 1856, and proceeded to hunt 
Tottenham Court Road for furniture and decorative ac- 
cessories. They found nothing in shops that they could 
like or approve — not a chair, table, or bed ; not a cloth 
or paper hanging. So Morris designed the furniture they 
required, Burne-Jones painted the panels of the wardrobe, 
and Rossetti the doors and sides of the great settle. 
Thus began the modern movement towards beauty in design 
and decoration, and the planting of the seed of the firm 
of Morris and Company. 

Dim and gloomy looked No. 17, with a light dimly 



302 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

burning behind the tall studio window. Busy with com- 
merce and carts and very indifferent to beauty looked Red 
Lion Square on that November night. The fog had 
fallen thicker. I could just see the Union Jack hanging 
from the clergy house of St. John's Church at the west 
end of the square. It was the hour of vespers. I entered. 
A lamp burned in the chancel, a few lights pierced the 
fog wreaths, darkness hid the roof and the faces of the 
congregation — two lonely women. From a side chapel I 
heard the drone of the ancient and consolatory invita- 
tion : " Wherefore I pray and beseech you, as many as 
are here present, to accompany me with a pure heart and 
humble voice unto the throne of the heavenly grace. . . ." 

The immemorial words rose and rolled through the 
Gothic church, that upward-streaming Gothic, the romance 
of architecture, the poetry of devotion, that Pugin, Ruskin, 
and Morris loved. 

Denser was the fog when I emerged into the narrow 
street, thinking I would proceed by the route that Morris 
and Burne-Jones followed when they set out to seek 
furniture in the Tottenham Court Road. But all was 
changed. I saw only a brand new electric power station, 
the djTiamos intolerably active, and a few steps farther 
found — Kingsway. Amid these terrific material changes 
the immemorial invitation I had heard in the Gothic 
church still lingered like the cadence of fine music re- 
membered in a silent hour. I remembered, too, a passage 
that Burne-Jones, recalling the time in Red Lion Square, 
wrote long, long afterwards : " There was a year in which 
I think it never rained nor clouded, but was blue summer 
from Christmas to Christmas, and London streets glittered, 



THE BROTHERHOOD 363 

and it was always morning, and the air sweet and full 
of bells." 



THE BROTHERHOOD 

^OME sixty years ago three young men met in a London 
studio, and decided to be — themselves. Incidentally 
they formed a society, the name of which was to be kept 
a profound secret. Troops of young men had done that 
before. Troops have done it since. Why, then, has the 
name of that society or brotherhood, lived ? Why have 
countless books been written on the Pre-Raphaelite 
Brotherhood ? Why did artistic London flock to the 
Galleries where the life-work of Mr. Holman Hunt was 
displayed ? Because those three young men happened to 
be men of genius. It did not matter in the slightest 
whether their sympathies were with the painters who 
lived before Raphael, or with those who lived after 
him. Had they called themselves pre- Adamite, they 
would have painted just as well and made as great a 
mark in the world. Others joined them, but those others 
never rivalled the brilliant Three. Their names were 
Rossetti, Millais, and Holman Hunt. 

Rossetti, poet, painter, and mystic, was the man of 
ideas, the dreamer, a source of inspiration to the brother- 
hood, an intellectual wanderer, who could no more be con- 
trolled by the bonds of a society than a bird by a fence 
built around its nest. He roamed off, writing and 
painting beautiful things, always his own wayward, gifted 
self. 

\ 



304 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

The history of Millais is nearer to us. One wonders if 
he, the greatest of the Pre-Raphaelites, really felt the 
stirrings of the movement, seeing that in after years he 
cast off the P.R.B. ideals like an old cloak. To his 
companions it was for evermore skin and sinew and life's 
blood. But Millais ! Was the real man he who painted 
The Blind Girl and Ophelia, or he who painted Speak! 
Speak ! and Bubbles ? The most accomplished painter of 
them all, the finest workman, he tired of the trammels, 
followed other gods, and became the most popular painter 
of his time, and President of the Royal Academy. He, too, 
was himself. 

Mr. Holman Hunt, also, is vigorously himself. But, 
unlike the companions of his youth, he has never 
wavered. His art ideals and his practice of them are the 
same to-day as they were sixty years ago. Schools of 
painting have arisen, new men and new methods have 
budded and blossomed, Paris has opened her arms to the 
art students of the world, the character of exhibitions has 
utterly changed, but Mr. Holman Hunt has not stirred 
a hair"'s breadth from his path. He is like some old grey 
river which flows to-day as it flowed a thousand years ago. 

In 1857 he made a drawing of The Lady of Shalott for 
an edition of Tennyson's poems. His magnificent, be- 
wildering, erudite, symbolistic picture of The Lady of 
Shalott was only finished four years ago. The design is 
virtually the same as the drawing made in 1857. The 
idea that presented itself to him then was the idea that he 
worked out in the twentieth century. This picture will 
take you an hour to absorb and understand. Indeed, it 
needs a guide; 



THE BROTHERHOOD 305 

The advanced wing of criticism has cried persistently 
that painting must have nothing to do with literature. 
Mr. Holman Hunt is deaf to all such commands. Every 
picture he has painted is inextricably mingled with a 
literary motive. His masterpiece, The Scapegoat, illus- 
trates one of the best known and one of the most haunting 
scenes in literature. I defy any one, whether he be advanced 
critic, Sunday-school teacher, or weary gentleman of 
the Press who has seen everything, to look at this picture 
unmoved. The literary motive and expert painting unite. 

Take another of his masterpieces, The Fvnding of the 
Saviour in the Temple. No Paris-trained modern could 
draw better than this. I doubt if any living man could 
get the sparkling quality of the Saviour''s robe, or the 
sense of race in the faces of the Hebrews seated in this 
court of the Temple. Certainly none but Mr. Holman 
Hunt could have given to the scene the air of deep sincerity 
that pervades it, the certainty that it happened thus and 
in no other way. And for sheer beauty look at the sheep in 
sunlight in the little picture called Strayed Sheep. 

But Mr. Holman Hunt's work is not always on this high 
level. He ever aimed high, but he did not always hit the 
mark. His picture, The Beloved, owned by the King, is 
almost repulsive; many of his portraits are unattractive; the 
limbs of the children in The Triumph of the Innocents have 
the muscles of giants ; May Morning on Magdalen Tower 
is positively ugly ; The Distribution of Holy Fire in the 
Church of the Sepulchre, Jerusalem, is a nightmare of con- 
fusion ; there is no atmosphere in any of his pictures ; the 
colour is often harsh ; details are painted with the same 
strenuousness as the important passages — and yet what an 



306 



THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 



amazing achievement it is ! What a life's work ! In an 
age of doubts he has been faithful to his convictions and 
ideals. I like to recall a certain story — how the owner 
of one of his early pictures removed the frame and found 
scrawled in boyish handwriting, in letters a quarter of a 
century old, the words, " Neither, O Lord, pass me by." 



WINGS AND STARS 

T^^HEN Gladstone wrote to Burne-rJones offering him 
a baronetcy, his first trouble after accepting the 
honour was the choice of arms and a motto. " I don't sup- 
pose I have any," muttered the painter, remembering, and 
proud of the fact, that his father (whom he describes as " a 
very poetical little fellow, tender-hearted and touching, 
quite unfit for the world into which he had been pitched ") 
had been a Birmingham carver and gilder. So he must 
choose his own arms and motto. And he chose Wings and 
Stars, with the motto, Sequar et atUngam. 

That choice was like Burne-Jones. He could never 
have been anything but what he was, the painter of King 
Cophetua, Love Among the Rums, and The Briar Rose. 
He loved one vision only — the interior vision ; he 
liked one kind of painting only — the pictures by the 
old Italians, works by Rossetti and those who were of 
their kinship. For all that great modern school, so daring, 
so ebullient — ^impressionism that dates from Turner; 
*' plein air " painting ; the wind blowing, and the rain 
wetting that dates from Constable — he cared nothing. 
The modena movement did not exist for him. His heart 



WINGS AND STARS 307 

was with Fra Angel ico in the 'convent of S. Mark at 
Florence, and with the early painters of the Rhine Valley 
— those mystic, nameless masters. He did not think of 
becoming a painter until he was twenty-three, because 
" I hated the kind of stuff that was going on then." Not 
until he saw the works of Fra Angelico and Rossetti did 
he discover that he liked painting. He was really a 
mediaeval student, with a passion for illuminating manu- 
scripts. And he had all the recluse's power of withdraw- 
ing into the fastnesses of his own mind. Certain ancient 
pictures set him on fire ; he was always homesick for Italy ; 
art that had not mediaevalism in it left him cold ; the system 
of exhibiting pictures for sale in galleries was repugnant 
to him. For success he cared little ; but misfortune or 
sorrow in others always drew his sympathy. He grudged 
the drowsy, sleepy parts of long poems, but loved "little 
things, not many lines long, that make me tingle every 
time I say them." 

Conquest, Imperialism, the competition of the market- 
place were anathema to him ; and this dreamer, such is the 
irony of life, was Mr. Rudyard Kipling's uncle. We know 
what he thought of his nephew's " Plain Tales from the 
Hills." But we have yet to learn what the author of 
" Stalky and Co." thinks of The Merciful Knight Who 
Forgave His Enemy. I never walk through Bloomsbury 
without remembering that the marigolds in that haunting 
picture were painted from a garden in Russell Square. 

Like all true artists, he was modest about his work. 
" How poor and faint my beginnings were — a little twitter 
at dawn." At thirty he could write : " I work daily at 
Cophetua and his maid. I torment myself every day — 



308 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

I never learn a bit how to paint " ; but he did learn how to 
paint in his own circumscribed way, supremely well, and he 
learnt how to live. Sequar et attingnm. Wings and Stars. 



MYSTERY IN MARBLE 

A UGUSTIIS SAINT GAUDENS was never common- 
■^-^ place. Like Rodin, he was able to quicken his 
material to wonder, mystery, and pathos ; but some hinder- 
ing gravity of temperament, stern and sane, restrained him 
from attempting the extremes of emotion that Rodin 
has surprised sculpture into betraying. 

Perhaps the work by Saint Gaudens that would make 
the most universal appeal, if all could see it, is the 
seated figure called variously Griefs or Death, or The 
Peace of God, in the Rock Creek Cemetery at Washington. 

This " modern expression of Nirvana — a soul returned 
upon itself" — has a setting in accordance with its eternal 
significance. Hidden in a mass of evergreens in a secluded 
part of the cemetery, beyond paths or guide-boards, is 
this bronze figure of a woman seated on a roughly carved 
block against a great slab of granite. She is draped from 
head to feet ; her eyes are closed ; her chin rests upon her 
right hand ; she is dreaming the eternal dream, and the 
closed eyes perceive futurity. 

There is no inscription on the monument. It is known 
merely as " a memorial to a Mrs. Adams, a woman who 
lived and died." Even in the photograph, this figure, 
which has something of the unfathomable mystery of Leon- 
ardo's Mona Lisa, arrests and lingers in the memory. 



MYSTERY IN MARBLE 309 

It stands as a poignant and compelling example of 
Tolstoi's definition of art — the communication of emotion 
from the artist to the observer. What Saint Gaudens 
felt when he made this strange, contented symbol of grief 
that looks beyond, is passed on to us. Some nameless 
person wrote of her : " She appears to know all there 
is to know, and is a positive and negative to every 
sentiment one can suggest concerning the unknown." 



DECEMBER 



DECEMBER 



A DREAM-HAUNTED ROOM 

X\^ALK north, south, east, or west for many hours and 
you will reach a point where trivial cottage-villas 
are rising on the outskirts of green fields ; there London 
begins, for the moment. But I like to think that her real 
beginning is at her great gateway on the Thames — the 
Tower Bridge. There is no place in London from which 
that gateway can be seen more vividly, yet as in a dream, 
than from the bay-window of the King's House in the 
Tower. Far beneath flows the grey and sullen river, and 
to the left rises the Great Bridge, towering above the 
vessels that have converged from all the world over to the 
heart of London. 

In that historic chamber in the King"'s House I stood 
peering out through December mists upon the gateway to 
the City. No sound penetrated those thick walls. The 
tugs and steamers passed noiselessly ; the sleet pattered 
on the window-panes ; now and then a figure huddling 
from the bitter wind hurried along the parapet above the 
river ; and, in the warm room, only the crackling of the 
fire broke the stillness. 

I was alone with my dreams, and with the ghosts of 
those who said good-bye to life when they entered the 
Tower : 



314 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

" Un peu de reve 
Et puis — hoTijour ! '^ 

Small chance was there of forgetting them, for along 
the wall of the room is a row of portraits, with the axe, 
ghastly symbol, engraved beneath. Youth and age swept 
into eternity because chopping the head from the body 
happened to be the penalty for what they had done, or 
left undone, in England in those shameful days. Three 
queens were among the killed, and brave men and women, 
who bared their comely heads to the block without a 
tremor. Those were the days of faith, when death was 
held but as an incident in the souFs progression. What 
was the axe to a man like Philip Howard, son of the Duke 
of Norfolk, who believed, and believing cried, " The more 
suffering for Christ in this world, the more glory with 
Christ in the next " .'' He and they kept the undiminished 
gladness, the undeparted dream. 

She too, the Lady Jane Grey, who, like Jenifer, had 
many dreams, but they all came to one dream. On this 
same grey river she looked during her imprisonment in the 
Tower, seeing one day her husband led forth to execution, 
and hearing, as she gazed, the hammering preparations 
for her own scaffold. Seventeen years of age, she who had 
been ten days a Queen, and one hundred and twenty-three 
days a prisoner, made a good end, saying at the last, " I 
die a true Christian woman "" : 

" Unpeu (Tespoir, 
Et puis — honsoir.'''^ 

Hope and a dream ! One wonders what were the 




A DREAM-HAUNTED ROOM 315 

thoughts of this young creatm'e hustled, so much against 
her will, to a throne ; led forth on a dazed day to the 
block, and laid to rest with the others in the grim chapel 
of St. Peter ad Vincula, within the precincts of the Tower. 
That quick brain had absorbed so much during its seven- 
teen years of traffic with the world. The page of her life 
in heavy encyclopaedias is like a flower blossoming from the 
mortar of an old wall. She endeared herself to her tutor, 
Aylmer, afterwards Bishop of London, by her gentleness ; 
not only did she excel in needlework and music, she had 
also thoroughly mastered Latin, Greek, French, and 
Italian, besides acquiring skill in Hebrew, Chaldasan, and 
Arabic. This strange girl found a refuge from home 
unhappiness in reading Demosthenes and Plato. Her 
parents failed to understand the ways of this great-grand- 
daughter of Henry VII., for she was living a life within 
herself, seeing clearly, but misunderstood. She submitted 
patiently to the " pinches, nips, and bobs " with which her 
parents punished her petty faults. 

Roger Ascham understood her, and one of the ephemerals 
of history which will remain when battles are forgotten is 
that story told by Roger : how one day, when the others 
were hunting, he found the Lady Jane reading Plato 
in the original. 

What was she reading from the lips of the wise Socrates ? 
This ? 

" Never fear, Simmias and Cebes, that a soul which has 
been thus nurtured and has had these pursuits, will at her 
departure from the body be scattered and blown away by 
the winds and be nowhere and nothing." 

Or was it this ? 



316 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

" Yes," replied Socrates ; " and yet all men will agree 
that God, and the essential form of life, and the immortal 
in general will never perish." 

Or this ? 

" But then, O my friends, if the soul is really immortal, 
what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of 
the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity.*" 

These are dreams ; but that room in the King's House 
looking out upon the spot where London begins, and where 
the ten days' Queen, and student of Plato, ended, is a place 
of dreams. 

Her face rose before me as de Heere painted her, 
clad in the black dress with ermine trimmings that she 
wore at her execution. It is an oval portrait, a small 
thing surrounded by kings and queens, hanging on the 
topmost floor of the National Portrait Gallery. She is 
fair, and looks older than her years. The ample, tidy 
hair is light brown, with a space of parting showing 
beneath the plain black coif; the eyes are of a darker 
brown, reflective, content, one might almost say amused 
at a world that had no power to control, or even to touch, 
the hidden life of the spirit. The brow is high and un- 
rufiled, holding thoughts that the closed lips for ever retain. 

Then twilight came, the vision passed, and the Tower 
Bridge became one with the shadows. I turned to go, 
and as I moved towards the door, this dream-haunted 
room made a last appeal. I saw over the fireplace, above 
the leaping flames, this sentence, carved by some for- 
gotten hand, in the woodwork, " Vivre sans Reve, qu'est- 



TOYS, PEAS, AND A STAR 317 



TOYS, PEAS, AND A STAR 

TjlUMES of incense filled the Hall. The Morality play 
was ending. A red curtain had been drawn before 
the altar concealing penitent Youth from our eyes. 
Riot, Luxury, and Pride, having been discomforted, were 
now changing their Queen Mary costumes in the dressing- 
rooms, and wondering whether the omnibuses would be 
running through the fog. Charity and Humility, modestly 
triumphant on a darkened stage, were looking very beau- 
tiful against sad tapestries. Then " Amen ! Amen ! " was 
intoned. The hushed audience stiri'ed. " The Interlude 
of Youth " was over. 

On tip-toe I crept to where a child of my acquaintance, 
a little dazed, was sitting with her mother. The child was 
silent. It was her first play. Wonderful things she had 
heard about the delights of the theatre, and now she had 
seen her first play. I was a little disappointed too, 
because in this Morality there were no shepherds watching 
their flocks by night, or sheep-folds, or superb kings 
wandering about the country, longing to rid themselves of 
superb crowns. 

" You must let me take you to a pantomime,"" I said to 
the child. But she did not respond. Once bitten, twice 
shy. She knew now what a play was like. Her troubled 
eyes and white frowning brow conveyed that intimation. 
So I changed my approach of attack to her affections, and 
said : 

" Look here, now ! I'll walk to St. Paul's Churchyard, 



318 



THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 



and I'll walk close to the gutters all the way, and every 
penny Christmas toy I see, I'll buy for you." 

The day was won. Her eyes danced ; she clapped her 
hands. 

Ludgate Hill in December was then still the flourish- 
ing market for penny toys, so thither I turned, pro- 
ceeding by Great Turnstile to Lincoln's Inn Fields ; 
but there the fog was thick and blinding, and there I 
twisted and doubled like a hare in a quarry-pit. Three 
distant flaring naphtha torches drew me away from the 
Fields into side streets — three torches held aloft by three 
keen coster-boys standing in line upon the kerb, who 
offered, in unison, to conduct me anywhere. Withdrawing 
from their clamour, I watched the effect of the flames 
leaping upwards through the fog, illuminating a poster of 
" Peter Pan " on the hoarding background. There was the 
nestling red-roofed town, stars above, in a clear sky, and 
the white road winding up over the hill, with one star 
beckoning the pilgrim. As I looked there rose before me 
a hill-side on the borders of Kent and Sussex, just the 
place that " Peter Pan " would know, where falls not fog, 
or soot, or any gloom, nor any torch burns blindingly. So 
I called one of the vociferous boys and said, "Cannon 
Street Station, by way of Ludgate Hill." 

As it was comparatively clear in Ludgate Hill, I dis- 
missed the link-boy and paused before the first gutter 
penny-toy merchant, who was stationed just beneath the 
railway arch. I bought a draught-board and pieces for a 
penny ; then a papier-mache champagne-bottle, life-size ; 
a trombone ; a bunch of violets that turns into a long 
blue snake when you blow upon the flowers ; a complete 



TOYS, PEAS, AND A STAR 319 

set of kitchen-furniture for a dolPs house ; a battalion of 
tin soldiers, and a bladder that becomes a flying machine. 
Then I stopped — weary and laden. 

The pavement of Ludgate Hill was almost impassable. 
All the world seemed to be buying penny toys, and no 
one was ordered to move on. Between the railway arch 
and St. Paul's I counted one himdred and sixty-one men, 
women, and children standing in the gutter, shoulder to 
shoulder, offering their multifarious wares. There seemed 
to be as many merchants in the gutter on the other side, 
and I saw only one policeman. " Would you not call this 
obstructing the traffic ? " I asked modestly. " They'll all 
move off by Christmas,'" he answered genially. 

Upwards I walked, through the din and mirk, reflecting 
uneasily that if I kept my compact with that child I must 
procure at least six sacks and hire at least two four-wheel 
cabs. Beyond this present trouble floated the comforting 
thought that soon I should be climbing that hill in Kent, 
beneath a clear sky, onwards towards the beckoning star — 
just such a Star of Hope as led the shepherds and the 
kings to the door of Eager Heart's cottage on a clear 
frosty night. On such a night the Bearded King, with 
the fillet of the philosopher about his brow, wrapped his 
mantle around the cold body of the shepherd, and envied 
the Initiate Dead. Why, ages ago, that might have 
happened on the very spot where St. Paul's now stands. 
Here shepherds once watched their flocks by night, gazed 
up in wonder at the stars, and knew that far below in the 
eastern valley, beyond the sheep runs and the moors and 
the lagoons, was home — in the mud huts about Tower Hill, 
or by the western ford of Westminster. Those shepherds 



3^ THE DIARY OF A LOOKER ON 

knew the heavens, and chose the star of their destiny. 
We choose our star — the pilgrim's star — which moves not 
east or west. 

Meanwhile I had barely time to catch the train for 
Kent, and between me and that hill rose the face of 
an expectant child, the mouths of six empty sacks, and 
the bare roofs of two four-wheel cabs. Life is not easy 
even for the pilgrim with good intentions. I recalled the 
story of two pilgrim ancestors who, for penance, were 
ordered to walk to the Holy Land with peas in their 
shoes. One performed the journey without difficulty, but 
the other was crippled. The sufferer asked his companion 
why he was so nimble, and he answered, "I boiled my 
peas." 

Should I boil my peas ? 

Before Queen Anne's statue I paused irresolute. 



IN POSTMAN'S PARK 

XT is not a park, and I have never seen a postman loiter- 
ing there, or elsewhere, for the matter of that. One 
no more expects to see a dallying postman than a dawdling 
fire-engine, or a reflective evening newspaper cycle-boy. 
Postman's Park is merely one of those sad little graveyard 
survivals in the heart of London which have been spared 
because they are so small, and because our dead were laid 
there. Their tombstones have been piled reverently 
against the boundary wall ; hard paths have been made, 
hard seats provided, and dingy shrubs. All day the City 
traffic dins and surges around. Errand-boys slink in here 



I 



IN POSTMAN'S PARK 321 

to eat hard apples, to read " bit " papers, and sometimes 
to spell out the names of the unconcerned dead. Mer- 
chaits find it a short cut from Aldersgate Street to King 
Edward Street, and I suppose on Sundays parishioners 
attend the unpretentious church of St. Botolph, of which 
Postman's Park is the ancient churchyard, to listen to the 
Word, to blink before the glare of the many painted 
windows, and to rest their eyes on the heavy monuments 
to departed citizens. 

This orderly churchyard, this grey oasis fighting for 
existence, hemmed in by giant buildings, is rightly called 
Postman's Park, for, were it not for the blind wall of St. 
Botolph's Church, the graveyard would be as encompassed 
by Post Office buildings as is the bull-ring by spectators 
on a gala day at Seville. 

The windows of the Postmaster-General's department 
stare down, like so many eyes, upon the graveyard, and 
soon more stone walls will surround it, more window-eyes 
will peer down upon the tombs and blackened shrubs, for 
already additional Post Office buildings have risen on the 
site of old Christ's Hospital. 

In increasing numbers wayfarers will visit this quarter, 
not to see the Post Office, but to visit the humble 
cloister that extends across Postman's Park, to read some 
simple legends engraved on a row of tablets, and to think 
of the great Englishman, half painter, half teacher, who 
inspired the idea of these tablets. 

Here is the one place in all London where the heroic 
deeds of obscure citizens are commemorated. Their com- 
memoration dates back only to the year 1863, and their 
number is few ; but the tablets sweep along the whole 



822 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

length of the cloister wall, and occasionally a few silent 
figures visit the cloister and read the names and deeds of 
the unforgotten who, to save another, esteemed their own 
life well lost. From fire, from flood, from perils on the 
railway and in streets, from runaway horses, from scald- 
ings, from diphtheria, these men and women delivered 
their comrades. In the middle of the tablets stands a 
small statue of G. F. Watts. Beneath is this inscription : 
" In memory of G. F. Watts, who, desiring to honour 
heroic self-sacrifice, placed these records here." Above 
the cloister is engraved in bright letters his favourite 
motto : " The utmost for the highest." So vivid is the 
lettering that a Post Office clerk with good eyes could 
almost read it from his high window. 

I sat in the cloister one chill afternoon in December, 
watching the merchants hurrying through to King 
Edward Street, the errand boys eating apples, and the 
traffic in Little Britain passing noisily on the other side 
of the churchyard railings. What a piece of work is 
London ! Why, it was in Little Britain that Izaac 
Walton met Dr. Robert Sanderson " in sad-colom-ed 
clothes, and, God knows, far from being costly." It began 
to rain, you will remember, and the fisherman and the 
doctor stood up in a corner under a penthouse for shelter, 
and finally adjourned to a cleanly house, " where we had 
bread, cheese, ale, and a fire for our money." 

It was in Little Britain, then the chief book-market 
of London, that " Paradise Lost " was published without 
making the smallest commotion. It was in Little Britain 
that the Earl of Dorset, browsing among the books for 
sale, dipped into " Paradise Lost " and bought it. He 



THE PAINTER OF SILENCES 323 

sent it to Dryden, and Dryden said, " This man cuts us 
all out, and the ancients too.'' 

In the yard of Christ's Hospital, just over the way, 
very early on dark, winter mornings years and years ago, 
just before each Christmas, ancient knifeboard omnibuses 
of London would rumble into the school precincts. The 
sergeant stands with lantern and lists calling the names of 
the hatless boys, and packing them within the omnibuses 
for Paddington, Euston, or Waterloo. Then he waves 
his lantern, slams the door, and the omnibus disappears 
in the dark for Paddington, Euston, or Waterloo. Some 
of those boys are now perhaps aldermen. It was in 
Aldersgate Street 

A voice cried a command. It was the hour for closing 
Postman's Park. 



THE PAINTER OF SILENCES 

XN Western Cornwall, where I am spending the remnant 
of the old year, we were surprised to read that 
England had been under snow. 

While Hampstead and Highgate were tobogganing on 
the northern heights I met a small Cornish boy of my 
acquaintance walking out to the violet farms at Lelant, 
with a basket slung on his arm. He hoped to bring it 
back full of violets for the decoration of his mother's 
dinner-table ; but he returned disconsolate, flowerless, and 
snow-powdered. For that very afternoon the heavens 
began to pretend to snow in Western Cornwall. Not real 
snow, but enough to make the children born since 1891, 



324 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

the year of the last great fall, understand what a land 
wrapped in a white mantle is like. 

The next morning, after a night of great winds and 
raging seas, the distant hills were sprinkled with white, 
and the herring fishermen, returning home, slithered 
through a slush that had certainly been snow in the small 
hours. 

Rounding a corner I was almost knocked over by a 
painter, burdened with easel and canvas, who was hurry- 
ing to the station. " Steady ! " I cried ; but as he only 
smiled, I shouted, " Where are you going ? " " To Lost- 
withiel," he answered ; " there's three feet of snow in the 
valley." 

It's an ill wind, &c. He has made a reputation as a 
painter of snow. His chance had returned. He was 
delighted to stand out in the open and freeze till dusk for 
the sake of covering three or four panels with studies of 
Lostwithiel under snow. 

I knew the kind of picture he would produce for 
the next Academy from these panel studies — a large, 
capable, masterly canvas, that will look well on the wall of 
a public gallery. Thinking of him and the misery he 
would endure that day at Lostwithiel in the pursuit of 
excellence in his profession, I turned into the little Arts 
Club, sat before the stove, and turned the pages of an 
album of photographs of modern pictures. I knew what 
I wanted. Alas ! it was not there. I wanted to see again 
a reproduction of the most beautiful picture of snow that 
I know. It is by Henri Le Sidaner, and although it may 
not be literally like Chartres Cathedral, it is the impression 
of Chartres as Le Sidaner saw it one silent winter night 



THE PAINTER OF SILENCES 325 

of deep snow. Having once seen this beautiful dream of 
Chartres, this mute mingling of fresh snow with old 
weathered stone, carved by men who chiselled immortal 
figures because their faith was boundless, I cannot forget 
it. Can I describe it ? No. It is too simple, yet too 
subtle. Here are the externals : Day is fading ; a few 
windows glow with lights, the reflections fall on the snow. 
It is a picture of silence ; of to-day and centuries ago ; 
all white and still outside ; and within those ancient walls 
the lighted candles and the moan of man's immemorial 
petition. 

Le Sidaner is entirely himself. He belongs to no school. 
So individual is he that some call him monotonous. One 
might as well call twilight monotonous. 

This, however, is certain — that a picture by him is 
always beautiful. He is the Maeterlinck of the painting 
world, a practical visionary adrift in the twentieth century. 
The hard, ugly facts of life fade before him or he does not 
see them. His favourite hour is the half-light between 
the close of day and night, when the lighted lamps throw 
their reflections on water, snow, or rain-drenched pave- 
ments. He sees the world through half-closed eyes in a 
blur of beautiful mystery, and sights that you have seen a 
dozen times witliout emotion become, under the magic of 
his brush, as haunting as a favourite poem. He has 
lingered in Venice, and in seven large pictures he has given 
his impressions of the city on the lagoon at twilight. 
Venice herself can be very disappointing. I have seen her 
in fog, rain, and as ugly as a biting wind can make her. 
In these seven pictures she is eternally lovely. You can 
hardly believe that it is a city built by man. 



326 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

You sit and gaze. The vision of this beauty-intoxicated 
Frenchman becomes yours ; the walls lift, and you are 
dreaming in Venice. Yet the pencil drawings and sketches 
that he made for these pictures are as careful and con- 
scientious as students' performances. Only by such spade- 
work was he able to suggest the blurred brilliancy of these 
visions of Venise du Cr4puscule a la JVuit. 

Facts are contained in his pictures, but under the magic 
of his brush they become effects. His themes have been 
painted a hundred times — twilight and lighbed windows, 
with old houses rising above slow-moving rivers eloquent 
with reflections ; fishing-boats in harbour, with again the 
lighted windows, the huddling, mysterious houses, and the 
myriad scintillations on the water. Yet they are like no 
other pictures. They move the emotions ; they call up 
mystery ; they ask questions. 

Such a temperament should ignore the human element. 
When he does introduce figures, such as the group of girls 
in Le Printemps, or the pale and shadowy figure in 
Bruges la Morte^ Le Sidaner almost fails. The figures 
intrude. They are a discord in the vision of his eye. 

But there is nothing to break the exquisite harmony of 
La Table au Clair de Lune — a table covered with a white 
cloth set in a garden flooded with summer moonlight. 
The silver coff*ee-pot, the white cups, the vase of flowers, 
the two white chairs pushed away from the table, the dim 
house in the background with its faintly illuminated win- 
dows, imply humanity ; but it was the moonlight relating 
the tones of the white objects one to another that Le 
Sidaner felt. The moon, not man, was here the theme of 
this painter, who makes the intangible seem real. 



THE OLD QUEST 327 

Born in Mauritius, he is a blend of Breton and Creole — 
the result a Le Sidaner. Does this ancestry explain any- 
thing to students of heredity ? 



THE OLD QUEST 

T HAVE just re-read « The Hearts of Men," by Mr. H. 
Fielding. It is, in its way, a rare, an exceptional 
book. It is sincere from cover to cover, the work of a 
lonely, brooding, introspective, but not imhappy man, on 
whom the riddle and mystery of existence has pressed 
heavily, and whose inner life-task has been to discover 
what he believes, and what is the meaning of the world's 
many religions. It is the search for a new faith, by a 
man " who did not find it, because he knew not what he 
sought." 

With this author the child was father to the man. As 
a boy he was of those (unenviable, unhappy few !) who 
take things hardly, who must for ever be asking why, 
who are not content with conventional theories from 
earthly elders, who will not be fobbed off with specious 
explanations. The curious, rebellious mind of this child 
was not dulled by contact with the world, as so often 
happens. The same questionings pursued him as a man, 
and it almost might be said that Providence or Fate 
worked with him, so that he might win through, helped 
by an exceptional environment, to his goal. Not for this 
seeker after God the distracting life of cities, competition, 
and the exhausting struggle to pay the way. His career 
sent him to the East, whence has come " all our light," 



328 



THE DIARY OF A LOOKER ON 



the birthplace of religions, the home of those whom Max 
Miiller has called " the most spiritual race the world has 
ever known," the country, conquered, and yet in vital 
matters all unconquered, by us, where " they carry their 
religion about with them,"" where " they are proud of it," 
where "they desire all men to know it." There, in a 
house half-way up a mountain side, he lived many years, 
much alone, with his books, his thoughts, and the marvel 
of the dawn, continually asking of himself and of nature : 
" What is the truth of things ? what do you mean ? And 
I — what do I mean ? What is the secret of it all ? " 

Old questions ! The libraries of the world are dark 
with books that have attempted to answer them. Shall 
we listen to this inquirer for a little ? He comes with 
good credentials. Many quiet lives have profited by his 
former book, " The Soul of a People."" That was an 'attempt 
to understand a people, the Burmese ; to understand a 
religion, that of Buddha. But he could not rest in 
Buddhism, although its rule of Law — unalterable, un- 
changeable — known by the Buddhist " long before our 
scientific men found it in the stars,"" held him with a firmer 
grasp than any other religion. He must pursue his 
Quest. 

It is a simple narrative, the work of one who feels 
rather than of one who thinks : mystical if you like, never 
philosophical. The sentences are short, the style candid 
as a child's face. He has nothing new to tell. Who, 
outside science, has ? In the course of his inquiry tradi- 
tion and authority are gracefully returned to their graves ; 
creeds and other inventions of subtle minds are gently dis- 
carded ; and in the hearts of men and women alive to-day. 



THE OLD QUEST 329 

whose personal religion, whose daily conduct of life, rises 
above their creeds, he finds his answer. But his path 
was long and tortuous. Let us follow him a little. 

I pass over his boyhood, and the agony he endured 
from being unable to reconcile the week-day code as shown 
in the daily life of a public school and the Sunday code 
as taught in chapel and at prayers ; I pass the awakening 
that came from reading the " Origin of Species " and the 
" Descent of Man," and come to the ego who is, for 
better or worse, committed to his Quest. It will not be 
denied. He must find his way or perish. Surely, he 
reflects, not an impossible task. In this Empire of ours 
all the great religions are to be found. " It is the home 
of Brahminism, and of the mystical forms of Hinduism. 
There are more Mohammedans here than under the Sultan 
of Roum. There are the Parsees here, fugitives long ago 
from Persia on account of their faith, the only sun- 
worshippers who are left. There are Jews who came here 
no one can tell how long ago ; there are Christians who 
date back may-be eighteen centuries ; there are Armenians 
and Arabs." 

He bought shelves of books, and read them intently, 
hope always lurking in the pages. Books on Hinduism, 
Mohammedanism, Judaism, Parseeism, Confucianism, 
Jainism he read, and on many other strange faiths. 
But most of all he read about Buddhism. Several years 
of his life were thus spent. Then he collected certain 
ideas from various faiths, correlated and compared 
them ; and, after endless labour, he had advanced no 
farther, I gather, than the conception that " God is 
the Big Man who causes things." One by one this 



330 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

Solitary rejected the faiths of the world, till there were 
left to him but two — Christianity and Buddhism — 
and these in time went the way of the others. He found 
neither in Christ nor in Buddha the models men follow, 
*' because men are sure that, though there be truth in 
their teachings, yet it is not all the truth ; though there 
be beauty, yet are there other beauties as great, nay 
greater than these." And so, by slow degrees, always 
simplifying, he began to feel his way towards his goal, 
getting his first glimpse the day he realised that " God 
arose, never out of reason, always out of instinct." Finally, 
he turns away from the creeds that the spiritual geniuses 
of the world have formulated, puts his books aside, and 
steps down into the life around him, saying : " Man and 
his necessities are the eternal truth, and all his religions 
are but framed by himself to minster to his needs. I 
will now go to those who know because they know^ not 
because they think. My books shall be the hearts of men."" 
There Part I. of « The Hearts of Men " ends. In 
Part II. he tells how, following this clue, he found the 
path that led to peace. He had learnt "never to be 
deceived by theories or professions " ; that " the desire for 
immortality is one of the strongest of al 1 the emotions ; 
but the ideal which the theologian offers to the believer 
to fulfil his desire has no attraction. The more it is 
defined the less any one wants it. . . . Dogmas and 
creeds are not religion. . . . Never mind what the creeds 
say ; watch what the believers do. . . . Who are the 
happy men and women in the world ? They are the 
people who have religion. . . . Religion is not what you 
say, but what you feel ; not what you think," but what 



THE OLD QUEST 331 

you do. . . . The creeds are but theories to explain re- 
ligion. . . . No matter where you go, no matter what the 
faith is called, if you have the hearing ear, if your heart 
is in unison with the heart of the world, you will always 
hear the same song. . . . Religion arises from instincts. 
. . . There is no ' evidence ' in religion ; you either believe 
it or you don"'t. . . . The great doers have always been 
religious, the great thinkers rarely so. . . . The faiths are 
all brothers, all born of the same mystery. . . . They all 
come from that fount whence springs the life of the world." 

Which is to echo St. Paul's words that the Spirit of God 
dwells in every man, the Spirit of that one " God who is 
above all, and through all, and in you all."" 

Many are certainly inclining to some such simple faith, 
carrying with it simple rules of conduct. It is the business 
of living in this world, the duty of cheerfulness, the neces- 
sity of discipline in pleasure as well as in work, with which 
men are at last beginning to concern themselves. Some 
are even beginning to ask whether they desire immortality. 
The following questions, not long ago, were sent out 
broadcast by the American branch of the Society for 
Psychical Research : 

I. Would you prefer {a) to live after "death," or 
(&) not ? 
II. (a) If I. (a), do you desire a future life whatever 
the conditions may be ? 
{b) If not, what would have to be its character to 
make the prospect seem tolerable? Would 
you, e.g., be content with a life more or less 
like your present life ? 



THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

(c) Can you say what elements in life (if any) 
are felt by you to call for its perpetuity ? 

III. Can you state why you feel in this way, as 

regards Questions I. and II. ? 

IV. Do you now feel the question of a future life 

to be of urgent importance to your mental 
comfort ? 
V. Have your feelings on Questions I., II., and IV. 
undergone change ? If so, when and in 
what ways ? 
VI. (a) Would you like to Tcnow for certain about 
the future life, or (6) would you prefer to 
leave it a matter of faith ? 

A sign of the times. It is the life that tells. Who 
chooses a friend or a clerk for his creed .? It is a man 
or woman's religion that makes and holds friendships, 
religion being (it is Mr. Fielding's definition) " the recog- 
nition and cultivation of our highest emotions, of our 
more beautiful instincts, of all that we know is best in 
us." In the outward expression of his own hardly-won 
inner life man rises above his creed. The Newman who 
lives is not the subtle dialectician of the " Apologia," but 
the man who wrote : " One secret act of self-denial, one 
sacrifice of inclination to duty, is worth all the mere good 
thoughts, warm feelings, passionate prayers, in which idle 
people indulge themselves " ; the Paul who holds the 
hearts of men is not the Paul of the "there are also 
celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial," but the human 
heart which broke through the fine meshes that the intel- 
lect had been weaving, in that great outburst : " Though 



THE YEAR ENDS 333 

I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have 
not charity. . . ."" 



THE YEAR ENDS 

A S the looker-on was musing the fire biu'ned ! Being 
the last night of the old year, he allowed himself the 
joyless luxury of retrospection. 

Everything favoured sentiment — the lonely hearth of 
the hotel coffee-room, the chimes of the village bells, the 
companionable cat that had curled itself upon his knees, 
and the song that a party of North-country singing-men 
were chanting in an adjoining room. It was that haunting 
Canadian Boat Song : 

" Listen to me, as when ye heard our fathei 
Shig long ago the song of other shores — 
Listen to me, and then in chorus gather 
All your deep voices as ye pull your oars.'''' 

The chorus did gather all those deep voices ; but when 
the voice of the singer dropped tenderly at that line, 
" And we in dreams behold the Hebrides,"" the looker-on 
saw — the Hebrides. Then the vision passed and he was 
left alone with the dying year. He trimmed the lamp, 
coaxed the fire, and opened the book that he had chosen 
as the companion of his vigil. It was the last work of 
F. W. H. Myers, that eager, tireless soul who spent his 
life endeavouring to peep behind the folds of an impene- 
trable curtain, thinking he had seen the Unseen, when all 
he saw was a glimmer of Time's candle reflected on the 
raiment of Eternity. 



334 THE DIARY OF A LOOKER-ON 

The looker-on read, sighed, and was made happy by the • 
beauty of the dead man's thought ; but when he came to 
this verse he closed his eyes and dreamed : 

" / wailed as one who scarce can he forgiven^ 
Bid the good God had pity from qfar^ 
And saw me desolate, and hung in heaven 
The signal of a star.''"' 

The night was very still, and unsought thoughts roamed 
through the dreams of the looker-on ; but although his 
body drowsed, he himself chased the spirits of the Dead. 
He walked, in fancy, the stages of the Via Mystica, along 
the worn paths of Purgation, Illumination, Contemplation ; 
he sat in the meadow with the Quietists, and mingled with 
the souls of those who at last had escaped the ache of 
resisting the Divine call. 

Then silence— sleep, peace, and awakening to a New 
Year. 



Printed by Ballantyne <St= Co. Limited 
Tavistock Street London 



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